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THE HOARDING 


BY THE SAME AUTHOR 


ROBERT GREGORY: The History of 
a Little Soul 

“For those to whom beauty is beauty 
even if it is subtle, ‘ Robert Gregory’ will 
be a morsel to linger over.’’ 

—The New York Times. 

“The book has undoubted fascination.” 

—The Times {London). 

“It is a clever, subtle piece of work.” 

—The British Weekly. 

“ The skill with which the soul of Robert 
Gregory is laid bare for our inspection is 
remarkable.”— The Morning Post. 

“ Mr. Owen has written a great exposition 
and interpretation and his power is unmis¬ 
takable.”— The Bookman. 

“As a human document it is one of 
the most remarkable things which have 
appeared in the last ten years.” 

—The New York Tribune. 


E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY 





THE HOARDING 


BY 

JOHN OWEN 

Author of "Robert Gregory," etc. 



NEW YORK 

E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY 

681 Fifth Avenue 




Copyright, 1923 
By E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY 0q f P^ 

AU, rights reserved, 






Printed in the United States of America 



TO 

MY FRIEND 

JVrifyur (SfyurirtymaTt 




i 






THE HOARDING 


I 





THE HOARDING 


CHAPTER 1 

Because I once told the story of a man in the 
cotton trade there has been thrust upon me a tale of 
a very different sort, yet with a background of com¬ 
mercialism. The man who told me the story knew, 
I think, two, if not three, of the chief people in it, 
and knew them fairly well. ‘‘ Advertising, ? ’ said this 
friend of mine once when in Weftport, “advertising, 
Elmslie, is now a—‘profession/ It’s their own word, 
the men who run it. And when you get something 
deeply enough established to give it a sort of right 
to call itself by that style (pretentious, perhaps?), 
you are likely to discover that many things are be¬ 
coming involved—deep things even of the heart. 
Every human business is bound to be charged, 
whether in its remoter or more obvious passages, 
with the stuff of human passions (a piece of cloth 
in a window—well, the physical seeming of some 
immortal made it, perhaps suffered to make it).” 

And this so-called “profession” must now be sup¬ 
posed to have its human, even its spiritual, side— 
and its stories. 





2 


THE HOARDING 


Well, here is the story as it was handed to me. 

I have only this to add. I don’t accept responsi¬ 
bility for anything, and I am not writing to endorse 
the methods of a man who, for instance, found that 
the practice of his profession admitted of the use of 
the genius of one of the first of English painters. 

And yet I suppose he would argue that twenty 
years of perfect art on the walls would reshape our 
psychology. However, what matter my view? This 
is his story, not mine. —R. Elmslie. 


The story seems properly to begin with the record 
of one Higgs, “ex-service man,” and at this fateful 
hour in charge of a lift in Imperial Buildings, E.C.— 
a small man with red peppery eyes. He stands out a 
sort of human absurdity, a grotesque, a mere figure 
of fun whose contribution, taken as we have to take 
it, is not at all in part with what follows. A man of 
an infinite stupidity, his story has to be reconstructed 
—and in terms other than his own. 

He wasn’t without his philosophy. “Them as is 
et the top, they’re et the bottom. It’s es they begin 
to go up that they comes dahn. A floor at a time. 
And them es is et the top, you’ll find on the grahnd 
floor.” 

The wars in which he had taken a part understood 
to be distinguished, were securely hidden in the dark 
recesses of the Past. “Ex-service” has no reference 
to our last war; but the criticism of the controlling 
powers was not very different from what it has come 


THE HOARDING 


3 


to be in these times. To the mind of Higgs these 
powers were presented as intriguing, oppressive, and 
obscurely in league with Circumstance and Environ¬ 
ment for his own undoing. 

“They likes to dahn yer. When I ’es to turn to 
on me own I starts a fish and chips. I calls it the 
‘Imperial Fish and Chips.’ Did anybody ’elp me— 
try to ’elp? Naw! The public, es yer call it, went 
to a long-nosed feller in the next street wot also ’ed 
a fish and chips—a sheeny, a dirty sheeny. There 
weren’t no encouragement for what they call enter¬ 
prise. Nen! I always thought I’d like to ’ev a little 
business—puppy fancyin’, costering, or them there 
fish and chips. And there’s naw chawnce for nobody 
nahdays. Nen! Threawing money away.” 

He’d talk like that of blighted ambitions. Perhaps 
it was an ironical direction of Fate that this very 
man should be witness—first, most relevant witness 
-—to the rise of another ambition lifting itself from 
a foundation little less obscure than his own. For 
one morning brought into the handsome marble hall 
of that A section of Imperial Buildings in which Mr. 
Higgs stood, the figure of a young man. He was a 
tallish young man, overgrown, “weedy,” with a 
figure which had not yet taken shape, the shoulders 
being too close together—an effect accentuated by 
the badly fitting new clothes. 

He had a long face and lanky black hair brushed 
back from the ears, clear grey eyes under black and 
rather remarkably arched eyebrows, a big, generous 
mouth, and good teeth. But the whole gesture of the 



4 


THE HOARDING 


man was that of youth—so much so, indeed, that it 
no sooner caught the observation of Mr. Higgs than 
it set up suspicions. 

“Naw, yer don’t,” Mr. Higgs announced at once, 
seeing that the figure bore towards him. “Orfice 
boys can use the stairs.” 

Since the incident came to possess the tragic sig¬ 
nificance of history, it is perhaps worth mentioning 
that even as the words left his lips Higgs had a 
premonition: he said so afterwards, and not so long 
afterwards. 

“I beg your pardon.” The words, spoken slowly, 
even idly, had an inflexion of curiosity. 

“I said,” repeated Higgs rather shrilly, and he 
did not easily run to shrillness, 4 ‘that a norffice 
boy--” 

“Meaning me?” 

Higgs became aware of two grey eyes that con¬ 
centrated upon him with a force that he found dis¬ 
concerting. 

“Meanin’ you,” answered Higgs. 

“I don’t think you mean me,” said the young man 
rather gently. 

“But I do mean you. A norffice boy like you-” 

“Yes, like me, but not me. I don’t think I’d mean 
me if I were you.” 

Confused by this dialectical thrust, Mr. Higgs still 
struggled to maintain his original place in the situa¬ 
tion. He stood still now, arms akimbo, slightly swell¬ 
ing his cheeks, trying to discover with what kind of 
creature he had to do. He was like a bull in that 




THE HOARDING 


5 


sunny corner of Europe where it is accounted no 
more cruel to torment furious cattle in a ring than 
to worry timid stags with hounds. There stood Mr. 
Higgs, the hull, with the first dart in its shoulder, 
puffily taking stock of the position, meditating a 
charge, but uncertain and suspicious. 

4 4 Mean you. Why shouldn ’t I mean you f ’ ’ he got 
out at last. 

4 4 Because, ” said the youth still gently , 4 4 it mightn’t 
be a very good thing—for you. You see, you’re, after 
all, the servant of the tenants.” His blandness had 
become something in the nature of a miracle to the 
perturbed Higgs. 

There he stood, that boy, to the dull eye of Higgs 
still a boy in his teens—with only those curiously 
deep, observant eyes, and a jaw oddly firm and devel¬ 
oped for one of his years, to give character or dignity 
to his appearance. It wasn’t sense nohow, the con¬ 
fused mind of Higgs was telling himself, that this 
’ere feller should be standing there talking to ’im; 
and still this intolerable phenomenon of youth, ram¬ 
pant, copious, redundant, unconquerable, pervasive, 
stood there, a portent, a calamity pendulous; and 
still he went on speaking. 

44 You are paid so much a week—I don’t know how 
much—not a great deal, but then probably you don’t 
deserve a great deal. ’ ’ 

44 ’Ere—nen o’ thet; and es to what I deserve, let 
me learn you, me lad, I’ve served me country. If it 
wasn’t for the likes of me, the likes of you would be 
—would be ” 



6 


THE HOARDING 


“Oh, no we wouldn’t!” put in the youth calmly. 
“That’s hot air—pure hot air. Where are your 
medals, by the way?—or perhaps they forgot to give 
’em to you. No!” with quiet assurance, “I thought 
not.” For Mr. Higgs was puffing in silent fury; he 
was now nearly helpless. There were lots of things 
he would like to have done, but more than anything 
else he would have liked to discover why he did none 
of the things he wanted to do—throw the boy out, 
throttle him, even turn about and leave him where he 
stood. But words, if not the words he precisely 
wanted, seemed to come through his lips at last. 

“Medals. Medals, think I wear my medals-” 

“No. Quite straight, I don’t. But, look here—” 
the manner of the youth had changed suddenly—the 
tone was firmer, less gentle—“I didn’t come here to 
talk all day about your medals that don’t exist; you 
remember your manners when you’re addressing a 
tenant! ’ ’ 

“Tenant!” screamed Higgs in a wonderful cres¬ 
cendo in which alarm and confusion mingled with 
fury. “Tenant!” He really thought he’d got a 
point at last. “You’re not a tenant!” 

“At the moment—no. But,” continued this as¬ 
tonishing and imperturbable young man, “ it is really 
largely your fault that I’m not. You’re keeping me 
back. I’m not a tenant at this moment; but I shall 
be one by to-morrow.” 

“ You! ” If Mr. Higgs had meant the monosyllable 
to express contempt he had failed of his intention. 
The thing was more like helpless terror than any- 




THE HOARDING 


7 


thing else. Of course, what this norffice boy said was 
all me eye; but the faice of ’im and what an idea: 
*e was glad it was me eye because to ’ave ’im about 
every day when ten minutes of ’im had nearly been 
too much—well, it didn’t bear thinking about. 

But it seemed that the obscure and hideous pur¬ 
pose which this strange youth had professed was not 
a mere profession. 

“You seem to doubt me. I suppose you can’t 
understand anybody wanting to live in the same 
building as yourself. And there I am with you. You 
really show your intelligence in that-” 

“Not so much abaht it! I never said nothing of 
the kind. I-” 

“Oh, don’t be modest, and, if I may say it, don’t 
talk so much! And look here, Henderson-” 

“My nime isn’t ’Enderson,” Mr. Higgs began to 
declare wildly. It might have been supposed that he 
had been given the name of some notorious contem¬ 
porary homicidal maniac by his revulsion from it. 
“My name’s ’Iggs, and you’d better know it.” 

“I didn’t call you ’Enderson; that’s the first point. 
I don’t think much of ’Iggs as a name; that’s the 
second point. The third point is where is the care¬ 
taker who has the letting of the offices? I’ve got an 
order to view No. 47 top floor back.” 

“Why didn’t yer sye so before?” said Mr. Higgs 
sulkily. The impossible seemed to be true: this ’ere 
lad—don’t look as if ’e ’ad ’is first shave yet—was 
after an orffice; and now, suddenly, a new idea oc¬ 
curred and his manner visibly changed—became 





8 


THE HOARDING 


steadier, more amiable. For if, later, he could im¬ 
pose the idea on the secretary of the company owning 
the building that he’d found the tenant there’d be a 
small fee for him. 

“ You dawn’t need to werry about thet there care¬ 
taker. ’E’s out, as a matter of fact. 1 ken get the 
key outer the desk yonder and ren you up in a minute 
—sir. 77 

The last came unwillingly, but he was now out to 
conciliate. 

‘ ‘ Very well. Move, man, move. 7 7 

Mr. Higgs suddenly became the functionary— 
stepped into his lift, made a dramatic movement in 
the cage in order by the motion alone to welcome the 
new tenant within, and at the same time to offer him 
a service both devoted and lifelong, and when the 
youth had entered, with a gesture that was histrionic¬ 
ally distinguished, pulled the lever which set the lift 
in motion. 

“ You mustn’t expect a big orfice,” he began at 
once, to discount any objections which might later be 
raised. “It ain’t a big orfice; but there’s been some 
nice fortunes been begun in it, I 7 m told, though I 
can’t swear not ’eving been ’ere that many years, 
along of being ex-service and then trying fish an’ 
chips. But the last gentleman e’s down on the first 
floor already, and ’e ’ll be arfter the ground floor 
before long if ’e goes on doin’ as well as ’e’s doin’ 
now. ’ ’ 

“What’s his line?” asked the youth suddenly. It 


THE HOARDING 


9 


might have occurred to an observer that in the ges¬ 
ture which went with that inquiry now there was 
something that you might have called spring, pounce; 
you might, indeed, have got the idea that the young 
man saw something that he wanted. 

“ Ts line is pills, ’ ’ answered Mr. Higgs. “ ’E’s 
Peter’s Pills for the Pulse. That’s ’oo ’e is.” 

“I see; and”—for they were arrived by this at 
the top landing—“that’s 47, I take it. Not much of 
a place.” 

“ No, but you ain’t seen inside. There’s views 
inside.” 

“Views of what?” 

“Views of other people’s winders, other people’s 
businesses. An’ don’ you despise thet. It done Pills 
for the Pulse naw ’arm. No, en’ I mean it. ’E was 

ep ’ere in this winder one dye-” Mr. Higgs had 

unlocked the door and had led the way into a small 
room (“Fifteen by twelve,” he called it) with two 
small, grimy windows commanding the view he’d 
described. Imperial Buildings were arranged on the 
empty square principle, and people in back rooms 
could, on all sides but their own, see people in other 
back rooms on every level. There was a sort of spir¬ 
itual indecency in this general exposure. The dread¬ 
ful masquerade of the human soul had here to be 
maintained through the day if secrets were to be. 
kept. But this fact was not one which affected Mr. 
Higgs. ‘ 4 ’E was in this winder one dye, ’ ’ continued 
the liftman, “and ’e looks out, and dahwn below. 



10 


THE HOARDING 


orpysite, in block D thet is, ’e could see a chep—one 
of them cheps, wot d’yer call ’em?—with col¬ 
ours-” 

“A painter?” 

“No, not a painter. I don’ mean a feller that does 
work. ’’ 

“ Artist ?” 

“Thet’s it, thet’s it—them that uses colours but 
don’t never do no work. Well there was this artist 
feller in the orfice dawhn there with a big piece of 
paper. It was an advert, that’s what it was.” 

“A what?” The eagerness once before observ¬ 
able in the face of the young man was showing again. 

“Advert. What you sees on the walls. Pictures 
to try to make you bay things. Not thet there’s 
anything in it that ever I could see. I bought some 
‘Grip’ as they call it once, cos I seen it advertised— 
stuff that they say makes yer strong enough to jump. 
It never done me no good, and then there was-” 

“But what about the artist?” broke in the young 
man impatiently. 

4 4 Aren’t I telling yer ? ’E was ’olding up a picture 
5 e’d been droring. And ’e was ’olding it up in that 
orfice because why—because that there orfice is the 
orfice of Beech, the ad. agents.” 

“Who?—the what?” Again that excitement in 
the younger man. 

“Beech, the ad. agents. Son of ’is father—that’s 
all ’e is. Naw ideas. Well, there was that young 
feller with ’is picture—it was a picture of a bloke 
that ’ed just taken a pill. But this was the thing 




THE HOARDING 


11 


abaht the picture—the bloke ’ad a grin—it was a grin 
that met you, so to speak. It would go right acrost 
the street. I dessay you seen it—though you didn’t 
see it cos Beech’s took it up for ’im.” 

“You mean-” 

“I mean Beech turned it dahn. Old-feshioned. 
Thet’s ’im all over. And the young feller—decent 
enough young feller I’m told, and not ’is fault that 
’e was only an artist—was beginning to wrap it up. 
But that grin that ’e’d stuck on ’is bloke in the pic¬ 
ture was big enough to go right through the winder; 
an’ so it did, and it went right up till it met young 
Pills for the Pulse standing in ’is winder up ’ere. 
Well, if Beech didn’t see anything in that grin, Pills 
for the Pulse ’e did. An’ ’e seems to ’ev guessed 
what ’ed ’appened, and thet the feller was turned 
dahn, for he jest rens out o’ ’is orfice, ’its the bell 
for me, and I comes up at once (as I always do for 
tenants), and then dahn we goes together. And two 
minutes later there ’e was beck with a feller with 
long yeller ’air and a parcel what ’e called a porty- 
folio. And they didn’t mind me ’earing. ‘I saw 
they turned you down/ says Pills, ‘an I saw thet 
what they didn’t want was wot I did want, so you’d 
better come along up and talk abaht it. And so they 
did. Of course I didn’t hear no more. But in a 
week thet grin was all over the plyce on the placards. 
And, look ’ere. ’Ere’s the most remarkable thing!” 
Mr. Higgs, charmed and intrigued by the interest 
which he had evidently aroused in his listener, flut¬ 
tered an oil-stained dexter finger towards the youth; 




n 


THE HOARDING 


it seemed as if there was now being approached a 
climax so striking that the natural artist trembled 
lest he should fail in justice to the vast conception. 
“Yes, ’ere’s the most remarkable thing. That grin 
being everywhere and me feeling a bit queer, one 
night I—I bought them there Pills for the Pulse 
myself. ’ ’ 

It was at this junction that there came the most 
astonishing occurrence of the whole incident—the 
occurrence which stands out for ever in a mind not 
vivid, not quick in its reactions to Life. Mr. Higgs 
found his hand gripped. True, he did not under¬ 
stand the slow, whimsical smile in the face of the 
young man, nor the sufficiently obscure words 
spoken— 

“You’re the man we are all watching!” 

But, bemused though he felt, Higgs was gratified 
enough to attempt an answer. 

4 ‘ Didn’t I tell you ? Where, I sez, would the likes 
of you be without the likes of me serving in them 
there outposts of the-” 

“No, no, Higgs,” broke in the young man with his 
odd enigmatical smile. “Outposts my eye! It’s 
because you’re the wise, advertisement-reading, 
money-spending public that I’m on to you-” 

“Yer mean,” began Mr. Higgs doubtfully, reluc¬ 
tantly surrendering the supposed tribute to his ser¬ 
vices in India. “Yer mean because I bought them 
there pills?” 

“Exactly, because you bought them there pills,” 
said the young man with great calm. He seemed to 




THE HOARDING 


13 


find a subtle pleasure in using in bis own mouth the 
precise inflexions of the being on whom he found 
himself spending some curious interest. “And be¬ 
cause you bought them there pills, and because I like 
your face, I’m going to take this ’ere office.” 

“Yes, sir. Thank yer, sir.” Mr. Higgs had an 
extraordinary sense of gratification; it was extraor¬ 
dinary because it was so completely unlike any kind 
of gratification he had ever experienced before. 

For he could not in the least explain the circum¬ 
stances in which he was being made the recipient of 
the commendations which were gratifying him so 
much. But he had an idea that when the young man 
said he would take the office the young man ought 
to be thanked in an official manner. He (Higgs) 
conceived of himself as standing there now in place 
of the entire board of directors of Imperial Cham¬ 
bers Ltd.; and there was the possibility of the fee. 

“If you’re taking the plyce, sir, I s’pose you 
wouldn’t mind taking it from me, as you might say; 
me being the agent—matter of small commish comes 
into it, if you see what I mean. ’ ’ 

“Oh, yes! Certainly, Higgs. I knew I’d get it— 
Higgs! Yes, Higgs, you can say that you let the 
place to me—that you swept away my objections in 
the torrents of your eloquence.” 

“Dunno what yer mean abaht torrents. Never 
’ad no torrents”—Mr. Higgs seemed to think that 
he must not own to torrents—“but if you’ll kindly 
say I let the orfice it’ll be orl right for me.” 

“I will. That’s settled. Make your mind easy. 


14 


THE HOARDING 


I’ll take possession to-morrow. And now you can 
run me down.’ ’ 

The journey to the ground took a minute only. It 
was on the ground floor that Higgs remembered 
something. 

“You’ll be seeing the company’s secretary, I ex¬ 
pect. But in case yer don’t—in case I’m awsked— 
what would be the nime!” 

He didn’t know, because Fate cannot always be at 
our ear whispering to us that here is something rele¬ 
vant to the profound and tragic interpretation of 
life as we may some day come to write it—he didn’t 
know that he should have dismissed much else from 
his mind to dwell the more fully upon this fact that 
now, for the first time, he heard this name spoken 
by the bearer of it. 

“The name,” said the young man, half turning, 
for he had already started towards the exit, “is Box- 
rider—Richard Boxrider.” 


CHAPTER 11 


If you should want to trace Boxrider’s remoter 
origins you could do so, I suppose, by going down 
to Minton, N.E.—that last place on earth, that wide 
greyness in the panorama of London—“London 
over the border/’ you are taught to call it—some¬ 
thing too neutral to be mistaken for the London of 
colours and blacknesses—a place where men move, 
indistinguishable before that background to an end 
mysterious with that truest mystery which has suc¬ 
ceeded, not in holding curiosity at bay, but in never 
letting it have being; and yet a place where each 
man is supported by the moral dignity of his own 
secret. 

The Flatts Road Schools—one of those giant insti¬ 
tutions where young human nature is dealt with on 
the mass production principle—it was there that he 
seems to have got such schooling as he did get. 
Asked to discuss him in the light of subsequent his¬ 
tory, a bemused pale man with a narrow face, long 
nose and the pince-nez, badly balanced, that goes 
with the type, who admitted having been a master 
in the school, could be got to talk. He had a curi¬ 
ously spent air, and when he smiled, touching as he 
did his little straggly grey black beard, the smile 
struck you as being like the muscular reaction of the 
dead. 


15 



16 


THE HOARDING 


But he could certainly be got to talk. He had not 
turned out so many successes in the world that he 
could ignore those he had presented. He saw, he 
said, the greater part of the youth whom he’d tried 
to imbue with his few intellectual principles, in the 
shops of the district or carrying bricks up ladders 
or bestriding coal wagons. He used to wonder, hav¬ 
ing only an insecure philosophy, whether it was 
really worth the labour. “There’s that Walets now. 
I really put in a bit o’ work on him, and I thought 
he’d be some good. Figures were things he could 
play with—never knew a lad of his age more con¬ 
fident. But he sits on a lorry and doesn’t add two 
and two once a week, unless it’s to see he hasn’t 
been cheated of his wages. And there’s that George 
Smith. Quite a fist for freehand drawing. And 
seemed to like it too. But it’s been no use to him 
since he’s been on the bread round. And Peters— 
that boy was a reader. He found out I’d a few 
books. ‘And could you lend them, sir?’ Well, I 
did. He’s read all Dickens and he’s read history 
too. And blest if I didn’t set him on to the ‘Ancient 
Mariner.’ And what’s more he liked it. . . . When 
he came round to mend the roof, or rather to hold 
the ladder for the skilled man that did the job, 
‘Reading still?’ I ask him. ‘Well, no,’ he says. 
‘Can’t say I’ve got much time. . . . ’ They always 
run to that. No time. ‘No time for Eternity,’ 
as the old evangelists used to say. And I’m not 
sure they were not right. ...” 

He spoke with a weariness that made those who 


THE HOARDING 


17 


heard him wonder if anything in the man now 
throbbed in unison with the great human reality sig¬ 
nified in the story of any beginning. 

‘ 4 But, well, yes, Boxrider makes a change. Though 
mind you”—he paused, pushed his head forward in 
a way he had and, in continuing to speak, lowered 
his voice— 4 ‘mind you, I don’t know that I under¬ 
stood him.” He spoke as a man does who knows 
details without their interpretation. “With those 
others now you knew where you were. With him 
. . . extraordinary fellow. Persistence though; 
that was the thing at the bottom. Of course he’d 
got what you call a nose. No, not for learning. 
I don’t mean exactly what you’d call learning. Use¬ 
ful knowledge—that was what he seemed to be after. 
He began presently on my library. Finished it off 
in three months. But it was one night when he came 
in to borrow a book that I began to know what he 
was after. ‘Got any books on pictures?’ he asked. 
‘Not many. You’re not interested in pictures, 
though, are you?’ I said, and I laughed, for he’d 
been no good at freehand. ‘No. But I wanted to 
know about that stuff we used to learn. What was 
it called?—Perspective?’ ‘So you do want to draw?’ 
‘No, sir, I don’t,’ he says, ‘but I’ll show you. Come 
to the window.’ 

“I was sufficiently puzzled. But I went to the 
window, and down in the street at the corner to 
which his finger pointed there was one of those ad¬ 
vertisement hoardings. ‘See that, sir,’ he said. 
‘That’s what I’m interested in; I want to know how 




18 


THE HOARDING 


far away the things on that poster can he seen.’ ‘Do 
you think of painting things like that, Boxrider?’ I 
asked him. ‘No, I don’t—but I might pay other 
people to do that some day.’ 

“I didn’t say outright, ‘What do you mean by 
that?’ and there wasn’t much more talk. I was puz¬ 
zled, I admit, but not very greatly interested. I’ve 
so many of these boys going through my hands. A 
good fellow though, very scrupulous, I remember, 
in spite of being so cute; an unusual combination, 
I’ve found.” He went on talking slowly, drearily. 
He’d not been profoundly stirred by that first reve¬ 
lation of a young intent. Perhaps he ought not to 
have been. But the thing had, and has, its relevance 
to this story, of course. 

“I didn’t hear news of him for a bit: lost sight of 
him, though I believe he was living at the old ad¬ 
dress; and then I heard he was in Jenkyns’—you 
know—on the Broadway. ‘Jenkyns’ Stores for 
Nearly Everything,’ as they’re called now. It was 
that boy who was responsible for the ‘nearly.’ Old 
Jenkyns was telling me about it. Boxrider, he said, 
came in one morning to ‘see the chief.’ 

“ ‘I thought,’ says Jenkyns, ‘he looked as if he’d 
the cheek for anything. But when he said he wanted 
a job, I gave him a chance as a junior hand in the toy 
department. But I soon found he was not the ordi¬ 
nary kind of junior hand. He’d been there a week 
when the department manager brought him to me. 
“This young man wants to speak to you.” I was a 
bit busy, so I says, ‘ Out with it. ’ 


THE HOARDING 


19 


“ ‘I’ve a suggestion,’ he says. ‘You call your 
stores “Jenkyns for Every thing. ’ ’ Why don’t you 
call it “Jenkyns for Nearly Everything?” ’ 

“ ‘Why on earth should I do that?’ I barked. I 
was a bit hit off my coco, but you know that lad was 
the kind that you couldn’t ignore—put outside, so to 
speak. 

“ ‘Everybody says “for everything,” and it’s not 
true. Nobody’s thought of saying “nearly every¬ 
thing.” ’ 

“ ‘Oh, I see!’ says I. ‘Well, you’d better skip 
back to your work now and think about something 
else. ’ 

“ ‘But,’ says Jenkyns. ‘7 didn’t think about 
something else. I thought about that lad’s proposi¬ 
tion. And I saw he was right. We gave up a little 
and we got a lot. I tried the new style—and we’re 
known from one end of London to the other now by 
that name. It’s become a catchword that goes with 
my name. Only yesterday there was a leader in the 
“Daily Views,” and that said Downing Street is 
becoming like Jenkyns’ Stores, the place for nearly 
everything. . . . And there you are,’ goes on Jen¬ 
kyns. ‘Well, I used to give him some of our ads. 
to design after that—only we don’t do a great deal 
in that line of course. We’ve a big local trade, but 
not one that advertises a lot. All the same, I was 
thinking of finding him some kind of a job in my 
office—when he comes in one day and says he wants 
to give notice. 

“ ‘Notice?’ says I. ‘Aren’t you satisfied?’ 





20 


THE HOARDING 


“ ‘It isn’t that, sir/ he said, ‘I’m going to begin 
on my own.’ 

“ ‘What, as a General Stores—because-’ 

“ ‘No, sir,’ he cut in, ‘as a publicity expert. Go¬ 
ing into the City and—I hope when you do want a 
little job doing you’ll remember me.’ ” 



CHAPTER 111 


I 

Well, there he was duly established, you might 
say. There was a legend up and down those stairs 
within a week, or, one might more appropriately 
put it, up and down that lift. For Higgs, arbitrary 
as youth ordinarily found him to be, had decided in 
favour of that there young man up there; and the 
explanation of that approval was not alone to be 
found in the mere psychological one that Higgs’ 
mind instinctively rendered reverence to tenants— 
that his conception of the mere word “tenant” was 
of something that w^as set forth in capitals, in the 
way a king’s title ran. No, I should say, from what 
I’ve heard, that Higgs was a judge of character, 
and that even then Higgs was vaguely aware of the 
presence of circumstances dramatic and distin¬ 
guished. Briefly, I’m pretty sure that that man, 
looking out of his pair of red eyes, knew that he 
looked at a Beginning. And so he whispered; and 
the whispers crept up and down that lift. There 
were men on those dim staircases who took the 
legend from their liftman as he safely delivered 
them in their narrow doorways. 

“Smart young man thet. Very ’ot. Very ’ot, I 
should sye. ’E’ll do things. I shouldn’t be s’prised 

21 


22 


THE HOARDING 


if thet there young man didn’t stop long up there— 
if ’e didn’t come down along of you.” 

Basford, of Basford & Basford, Solicitors, listened 
gloomily; all stories of success made him gloomy. 
He was a tall, grey-faced man, with lowered eyelids 
and a mouth which seemed about to dissent. But 
though he spoke very little he found it possible to 
say 44 Good morning” when next he and the new 
tenant ascended together. 

As for Boxrider himself, he began to be pretty 
busy. He was searching the papers for commercial 
enterprises that plainly had no ideas behind them. 
And it was in that way that he discovered the 
“Bobs” chair. It occupied an inch on a back page; 
it had occupied the same place, he discovered by 
searching files, every Wednesday for six months, and 
a public not anxious to know was informed that 
“The 4 Bobs’ chair is worth many bobs. Give it a 
trial. Write for details.” 

He found the address was a by-street off Totten¬ 
ham Court Road. “Gladden & Co., Chair Makers 
and Upholsterers. Proprietors and Makers of the 
‘Bobs’ Chair.” 

Gladden, a man in early middle life, who’d prob¬ 
ably been a working upholsterer, surveyed his vis¬ 
itor with no friendly eye as soon as he found he’d 
not come to place a contract. 

“Who does my what? Publicity? Advertising 
you mean? Do it myself. None of your agents— 
middlemen for me. Think you can teach me my 
trade, I suppose. Nothin’ doin’. Good morning.” 



THE HOARDING 


23 


But lie discovered that his visitor, whom he was 
interviewing in a glass-sided office built up on the 
floor of the showroom, had found a seat—on a 
“Bobs’’ chair. 

“It’s a good chair,” Boxrider was saying imper¬ 
turbably. “It’s a pity you don’t push it.” 

“Push it?” cried the other, off his guard. “We 
do push it.” 

“Yes, with silly puns that ’ud make anybody sick. 
If you want to put your public off give ’em some 
rotten little pun. What do you do if somebody 
makes a pun in ordinary talk? You groan! Same 
here: a man reads about your chair and groans. He 
thinks you’re a fool—which you’re not; and he 
thinks your chair is a swindle—which it isn’t.” 

“Very good of you to say so, I’m sure.” So 
spoke the heavy-witted man, clumsily sardonic, ex¬ 
posing the fact to Boxrider, all the same, that the 
visitor’s imperturbability had not merely impressed, 
it had subdued. His apparent freedom of speech 
had been tolerated by the furniture-maker because 
Gladden had grown up among men who said what 
they thought. (“I’m still a working man,” was his 
frequent boast.) All the same, he tried to check this 
youth by that irony: “It’s very good of you.” 

“Oh!” says Boxrider now, “it’s good of me in a 
way of speaking. It’s good of me to warn you 
against puns. Not that your puns are the worst 
thing you do.” 

“And what is the worst thing we do, since you are 
putting us right?” 



24 


THE HOARDING 


4 ‘What! Well, it isn’t what yon do so much as 
what you don’t. You don’t give a price. When I 
came in at the door I asked the price of the thing, 
and I was told forty-five shillings. Well, for a chair 
of this kind it’s cheap—dirt cheap. You ought to be 
selling thousands a year. But I bet you aren’t.” 

“You think you know a lot, don’t you?” (All the 
same, I believe it is a fact that Gladden hadn’t got 
any useful business out of his advertisement.) 

‘ ‘ Oh, I think I know something! Look here. I’m 
ready to go bail that, when you sell, you sell through 
window displays in this out-of-the-way hole.” 

“Well, and suppose-” 

“Suppose it’s true? Exactly! People see the 
chair and see it’s cheap—and buy it. But in your 
ad. you tell ’em to write for particulars. Who’s 
going to write for particulars? They don’t want to 
be involved in correspondence with you. They think 
it’s a dodge—that it’s a rotten old chair and the 
maker wants a lot of money for it. Seven guineas, 
or something like that, they figure as the price— 
maybe fifteen; and if once he gets our address we’re 
done. That’s what they think. You say they’re 
fools. They’re not. They’re not clever, but they’ve 
a certain amount of common sense, and they’ve not 
too much money to spend, the majority of them. So, 
if you’ve got something good and cheap to offer, 
give ’em your price right away; all the fortunes 
have been made by the man who quotes-” 

“Sounds all right.” Gladden was shrewd; he 
recognized—he’d always done so really—that though 







THE HOARDING 


25 


he knew how to make the best chair at the price in 
London, and though he knew how to sell it across the 
counter, he’d never discovered how to reach the out¬ 
side public. “ Sounds all right. We haven’t got an 
enormous crop of orders, as a matter of fact. In 
fact, I’d been thinking of withdrawing the ad. ’ ’ 

“Don’t you do anything of the kind, Mr. Gladden. 
There’re men in Wigan and Milford Haven and 
Dunbar who ought to be sitting in that chair. 
They’ve as much right to that chair as the man who 
passes your window.” 

“Then what am I to do? Leave the ad. but cut 
down my space?” 

“Cut down your space? Double your space— 
quadruple your space, sir. But leave me to write 
the ad. And, see here, my fees are not low. They’re 
high—they’ve got to be. I don’t work for every¬ 
body. But, see here. I believe you’re an honest 
man. You deal fair. Very well. I don’t charge you 
a halfpenny till we get results. But when you get 
the result I know you will pay my fee.” 

“Done.” 

i 

That was actually the first commission. As you’re 
probably sitting on a “Bobs” chair to read this, 
with perhaps your feet on another, you will recog¬ 
nize that the easiest of receptacles for a weary body 
is pretty well distributed. But it is possible that 
you never heard before how you came in the first in¬ 
stance to discover that such a chair existed. 


26 


THE HOARDING 


II 

I have said that he was noticed in Imperial Build¬ 
ings. Gladden mentioned him to a man who was 
running a brain-training scheme from a first floor 
in B, and the man sent round for him. 

“I don’t know much about publicity, except that 
it’s a rotten game.” 

Boxrider put him down as a disgruntled school¬ 
master—which, as a matter of fact, he was; a lean 
and anaemic creature with weak eyes, Barberry by 
name. 

‘‘It’s a rotten game if you’ve got a rotten thing 
to sell,” said Boxrider. 

‘‘What I’ve got to sell isn’t rotten though,” said 
Barberry, petulant at once. 

‘ 6 1 didn’t say it was. But if it’s a good thing, then 
publicity’s the best game you can play.” 

“Oh, indeed?” 

“Yes. Fact. But we’ll soon test your goods. 
You’ve got three courses?” 

“Yes. What we call our 4 Applied Reading 
Course,’ our ‘General Training Course,’ and our 
4 Culture Course.’ The second and third are pro¬ 
gressive from the first.” 

“I suppose that a chap who started with one could 
go to the next if he chose?” 

‘ ‘ Certainly. ’ ’ 

“Well, as a matter of fact does he?” 

“Yes, he does.” Barberry was getting excited 


THE HOARDING 


27 


now. It was a simple matter to excite him. 1 i Half 
our people do that. But I don’t see-” 

‘ ‘ Then it’s a sound thing. See 1 If I was thinking 
of taking your course, which I’m not—but if I was, 
and yet was hesitating, and I heard that the men 
who began went on, I’d not hesitate any more. But 
I’ve had to come to you and ask you personally. 
Now, if I’d been writing your ad. the whole world 
would know that your customers come back.” 

“We don’t call them customers,” Barberry was 
beginning. 

“A quibble. I can help you—if you want help. 
When do I begin $ ’ ’ 

And so there was another client! 

But Barberry was not the only other person in 
Imperial Buildings who had been made aware of 
this Boxrider, Advertising Agent. There was that 
man down in D on whom Boxrider’s eye had rested 
on that morning of his first visit to the chambers. 
Standing in the little room which was to be his and 
peering, at the behest of Higgs, through the grimy 
window upon the offices below, he had looked into 
Beech’s office. 

It is perhaps significant of more things than one 
that Boxrider discovered Beech before Beech was 
aware of Boxrider. That a rival tradesman had 
set up in the building was made known to Beech by 
his senior clerk, using that easy familiarity which, 
as an observer might have thought, characterized 
Beech’s employees when addressing their master. 



28 


THE HOARDING 


“There’s another man opened in onr building. 
Saw him this morning. Cocksure-looking bloke; 
ought to be at school. Been here a week.” 

“Oh, indeed!” says Beech. 

He was a man of about thirty-five at the time— 
this Beech; tall, slightly stooping, shaved with what 
struck one as a pronounced, even an excessive, scru¬ 
pulosity, an indicative scrupulosity—a cut across 
the chin suggested a nervous scrupulosity—and with 
dark eyes. What one noticed first, though, was the 
pointedness of the features. 

The “Oh, indeed!” was not superciliousness. It 
was something recognizable as characteristic of the 
man. But what the man was can perhaps best be 
shown by a little exploration of what the man had 
been. 

To-day you suspected that Life was just a little 
too much for him—that it knew just enough tricks 
to baffle him; and it was of a mind conscious of de¬ 
feat and half angry but uncertain how it had been 
conquered that one always had an impression. Out¬ 
wardly he preserved the manners of his class—the 
instinctively good manners of a man whose father 
had done well enough to send him to a public school. 
It had not been a first-class public school. But the 
man was what you would call a gentleman—even 
(as he would have said bitterly), even remember¬ 
ing how he earned his living, a gentleman. That 
brings us right up to one of the secret causes of his 
failure—his initial failure. I don’t say that it was 
the most important cause, because certainly that 



THE HOARDING 


29 


must have been a mere failure in essential force, in 
sheer moral authority, in clearness and depth of 
vision. In short, and finally, this Beech was one of 
that type marked by an intellectual deficiency the 
results of which, to an observer, can appear so poign¬ 
ant. But the matter of deficiency in moral author¬ 
ity was related to that other matter of his being a 
gentleman. 


CHAPTER IV 


I 

Briefly, Beech was darkly suspicious of his own 
business. He had inherited it—and at a time in his 
life when he was under the sway of an original and 
astonishing intellectual force—that of his father—a 
crude genius, a born charlatan and an immense ma¬ 
terial success. His father had been a little ham¬ 
pered by want of capital. But, then, how had his 
father begun? In the market-place selling cheap- 
jack china with flaws, or cough-drops across a bar- 
row. The shuddering fancy of young Beech could 
often see that father of his—tall, gaunt, ragged— 
with his hungry eyes and glib tongue pushing his 
cough-drops almost literally down his customers’ 
throats. They were “customers” then; later, when 
there was an old wagonette and his father—in that 
dreadful astrakhan coat which went so well with the 
big imitation diamond rings—could make speeches, 
he talked about his “patients.” How well the boy 
could visualize those scenes in the London-over-the- 
border market towns, Barnet and Epping and even 
as far as Canterbury. His father had not married 
until he was forty, so that Thomas Beech, his son, 
had scarcely any actual remembrances of those 
times. And one day, as still bitterly he remembered, 

so 


THE HOARDING 


31 


he had come across some old cuttings of advertise¬ 
ments—advertisements proclaiming to some town 
(he thought it was Brighton) their “good fortune 
in being visited by the famous optical specialist, 
Mr. Sebastian Beech.’’ (Eyes were catered for as 
well as stomachs.) He had never cared to ask his 
father if it had been Brighton; everything that he 
could use to separate himself from those early days 
he did; so that he was not likely to take down the 
walls which blocked memory or to dispel the mists 
of time which had gathered to offer merciful obliv¬ 
ion to a dreadful past. As for the “Sebastian,” his 
father’s name had been George, but “nobody’d buy 
cough drops from a mere George.” (He remem¬ 
bered how his father’s eyes, notable for their large, 
moist kindliness, had flashed a vast contempt for 
the world he served and, as his son conceived things, 
robbed.) 

But by the time Thomas Beech was twelve, his 
father had given up the cheap-jack trade, and, real¬ 
izing that there was business in pushing other peo¬ 
ple’s goods, had founded Beech & Co.—which must 
have been one of the earliest advertising agents 
(using the term in its modern sense) in the City of 
London. Now, whether he was glad in the circum¬ 
stances that his father had exchanged the barrow 
for an office desk was a point as to which the boy 
could not be sure. 

If his father had stuck to the cough drops, when 
he (Thomas) came to the day in his life when he 
must begin to learn a trade, he might have had 


32 


THE HOARDING 


greater liberty of choice. His father could not very 
well have forced him to sell cough drops. Apart 
from everything else, he had not the required bla- 
tancy of utterance. His father, therefore, could not 
have . . . and yet he did not know. He could re¬ 
member so many things. . . . 

Well, that advertising business paid from the be¬ 
ginning. The “firm” made money and went on do¬ 
ing so, so that presently the sole proprietor had a 
pleasant house at Winstead in Essex with a long 
garden running down to the Great Eastern, where 
he loved to winder on half-holiday afternoons ig¬ 
norantly counting up the blooms which a paid gar¬ 
dener laboured to produce. 

‘ 1 What’s that red thing? A what? A pee-ony? 
Never heard of it. Looks nice, though. Better tell 
William to put in a couple of dozen more.” 

“But, George, it would spoil the effect.” That 
protest came from his wife. I have often thought I 
would have liked to have met Mrs. Beech—one of 
those delicate, imaginative women with large hazel 
eyes, tall, small-chested, hesitant, and with sensi¬ 
bilities that ran to welcome Force. That was why 
she had married that big, ugly, moist, overflowing 
husband of hers. Force, strength—get what you 
want and take no denial. She had dreamed as a girl 
(remember those were the days of romantic fiction— 
the ’seventies and ’eighties — with Realism still 
blessed years away); she had dreamed of being 
crushed and captured and carried off. And I should 
think that the dream had come true. He had dawned 


THE HOARDING 


33 


upon her father as a man in early middle life rap¬ 
idly making money in the City—“ pushes patent 
medicines and things—an advertising agent—in a 
biggish way.” 

It was thus her father had learnt the story, and 
her father had brought him home one day, and 
Beech had spun a tale—and he could always spin a 
tale—of being lonely, which he must have been, and, 
“If only I could find somebody to take pity on me.” 
He had said that very soon after he had spotted the 
girl, and in a fortnight—blest if he had not got her 
for his own. She had struggled; she had seen and 
been astonished and even, I believe, been disgusted 
by his crudities. But she had given way. And she 
really felt that night as she sat on after he had gone, 
with a big diamond glittering on her small hand and 
with her whole being reacting almost violently to his 
strenuous love-making, that her dream had come 
true. She had been conquered—captured. 

She was thrilled and terrified and almost sick with 
joy. The ring—it was one of his own. She did not 
like him wearing rings, but she knew she would 
never dare tell him so—that she never would dare 
to tell him anything. Well, she did not care. She 
wanted him; and so extreme became the character 
of her passion that she delighted even in the very 
things her mind ordinarily hated. She drew her 
fresh memories of his crudities right under her men¬ 
tal eye, as though each was a new facet in a stone of 
dangerous but unequaled beauty. 

And that ring hanging absurdly on her finger 


34 


THE HOARDING 


until he could bring her one for herself became the 
symbol of himself, and she pressed it to her lips, 
embracing his faults, his wonderful and overwhelm¬ 
ing faults, and finally falling on her knees to pray 
for that crude genius which was now hers. 

There you have the mother. It is less difficult now 
to realize the mind of that youth as he developed. 
He and his mother never talked of his father’s early 
beginnings. He knew that his mother felt as he did. 
She was bound to do. But there was always a curi¬ 
ous subtle sense of evasion of certain things when 
they discussed his father. As he grew up, though, 
there were moments when he had a kind of jealousy. 
. . . His mother loved him. But she did not merely 
love his father: it was not love, it was a kind of idol¬ 
atry. To him the phenomenon was incomprehensi¬ 
ble—utterly. But his own feelings were all engaged 
by his mother. As he came to realize his father’s 
character and the character of the business on which 
their fortunes had been built, he would have been 
glad to repudiate it all. He would have liked to be 
trained for a profession. One day he told his 
mother, and he remembered always afterwards the 
mingled pain and sympathy he discovered in her 
face: a pain because it was unendurable to her to be 
brought in contact with any reflection of her hus¬ 
band which did not exalt him as her mind had done; 
sympathy because those extraordinary crudities of 
his sometimes struck at her as they did always at 
her son. Her reply was at once an evasion and a 
compromise, for it was now that the boy was sent 



THE HOARDING 


35 


to Redburn, the old Yorkshire school where her 
brothers had been educated. He knew that in that 
way his mother had dealt with his heart. 

Afterwards he used to wonder if she regretted 
what she had done. Because the effect was natural 
enough; he became more acutely conscious than ever 
of his father’s social deficiencies, more painfully 
aware of that past of a market-place. Once or twice 
he even meditated a protest: “I say, you know, 
father,” or something of that kind, and once he had 
run out of the room, anywhere away from his father. 
He could still miserably remember that occasion. 
His father had just presented him to Bradder— 
Bradder who made pills and employed Beech to 
advertise them. 

‘‘That’s my lad. Looks as if he’ll be a real tip- 
topper, eh? I’ve had him educated at a tip-top 
school. None of your parlour boarders. Didn’t you 
say, Tom, you’d got ‘ an honourable?’ You what— 
you don’t remember?”—for that was what the boy 
would try to put forward by way of answer. 

“You’ll remember quick enough. And that’s the 
kind of schooling, Bradder, my boy’s had. That 
ought to fit him to take over from me, eh, and get 
the big solid firms to give me their work? The boy 
to do the real ‘I’m as-big-a-man-as-you’ talk, eh?” 

The boy had run from the room. He had gone 
to his mother; and he had found her sad, and he had 
known she was not sad for the reason that he was, 
not really; for though she shrank back from her 
husband’s noisy jocularities, she invariably flew to 


i 


36 


THE HOARDING 


him again, accusing herself of a disloyalty, or merely 
fascinated anew by his incredible bigness. She was 
sad because she knew that the public school had been 
a mistake: or her son suspected that that was the 
explanation. She certainly never told him. 

And then, quite suddenly, in an effort to present 
him with a brother or sister, his mother died. 

For him the house was entirely empty for years 
afterwards—empty of life, beauty, reality, empty of 
everything but a strange, noisy tintinabulation of 
shrill jests, shouted vulgarities. . . . He grew to 
hate his father. He believed that his mother’s death 
had affected his father very little. Indeed, in a week 
or two the man was noisier than ever. Bradder was 
always coming there now, and when Bradder was 
not there to scream (he expressed himself by means 
of a high treble like a pig in the agony of death) 
there were other like spirits. 

He could have seen his father fall dead without a 
hesitation. And yet repulsive as the man seemed to 
him, he had had a curious emotion which, oppose it 
though he might, he found grew with his knowledge 
of other men. This feeling was the result of a grow¬ 
ing conviction that his father was a bigger man than 
any he had ever met. The fact, when he saw it, 
alarmed and confused him; he ran easily to alarms 
and confusions. He hated his discovers; but the 
result was that he began to understand the fascina¬ 
tion his mother had felt. 

But he yielded to the pull of his father’s person¬ 
ality with an unwillingness which expressed itself 


THE HOARDING 


37 


in hatred. His father, he declared to himself, had 
murdered his mother, and having looked at this 
work gaily had turned back into life again with a 
guffaw. 

And then one day he saw something really rather 
curious. There was a little room upstairs looking 
out upon the garden of the house at Winstead. This 
had been his mother’s room in a special degree. 
One day he had been at the foot of the stairs when 
he had seen his father at the top. He had intended 
to go to his own room, but when he reached the pas¬ 
sage on the first floor he hesitated, for he had ob¬ 
served his father with a hand on the door of his 
mother’s room. 

The son’s first emotion was one of irritation. But 
it occurred to him then that never before had he 
seen his father in that doorway since his mother’s 
death. Swiftly though his mind explored the past, 
he could only remember seeing his father pass the 
door and descend the stairs before calling out some 
loud pleasantry to Bradder . . . and his father had 
gone in now on tip-toes. 

That was all. But the younger Beech was, and re¬ 
mained, immensely impressed. A few minutes later 
he could hear a bell rung below; the front door was 
being opened, and then there came the sound of a 
maid’s voice announcing to her master, understood 
to be upstairs somewhere, “Mr. Bradder.” 

Young Beech listened. 

He did not have long to wait. There was a sound 
of quick, light-stepping feet, a sudden noisiness on 


38 


THE HOARDING 


the stairs, a loud strident laugh, and then: “What? 
You Bradder? Are you for bowls? H’m!—haw, 
haw! Haven’t had your weekly swiping yet, my hoy. 
But it’s waiting for yer. The lawn’s ’ad its ’air cut 
and its chin scraped specially for the occasion. 
Haw, haw, haw!” 

The noise was not improvised and yet there had 
been that silence—that almost inconceivably signifi¬ 
cant silence. ... At last we have got his father. 
For that was the man. And young Beech sur¬ 
rendered then. And given that the boy was what he 
was, his father was bound to win when the day of 
battle came. 

There was bound to be that battle. The battle¬ 
field was one he knew. He had surveyed it years 
before. He had known, and he knew that his mother 
had known, that some day there would be that battle 
precisely there. He had looked often for some place 
of vantage, some strong point where he could set 
himself to repel the attack—for he saw himself de¬ 
fending rather than attacking. 

And on that misty morning in November, two 
years after his mother had left the house so empty, 
he knew that the hour of conflict had come. His 
father had been sitting back with three or four 
empty, greasy, after-breakfast plates before him, 
and had been wiping his beard and moustache free 
of coffee. He hated all that hair on his father’s 
face; he had once tried to frame a kind of social 
proverb—a vile punning thing, something about 
people with defective memories not giving them- 



THE HOARDING 


39 


selves hairs, unnecessarily—and then his father had 
spoken. 

“We’ve got half of that page in this rag to-day 
for Bradder. We don’t often get half-page busi¬ 
ness, though, even in papers like this.” The youth 
was reading the blatant appeal to use the remedy 
manufactured by the intolerable Bradder. 

“Well, well,” his father was running on, “we 
’aven’t got the really big people—the people who 
buy space by the page regularly and that take entire 
hoardings. I suppose it’s a matter of manner. I 
can get business—good business—but not the busi¬ 
ness that would land me in Park Lane. No, those 
big capitalist fellers, been to good schools, lots of 
’em nowadays, and I don’t seem to ’it it with them. 
I’m in my element with old Bradder. But these stiff 
Johnnies, with their frock-coats and their pinched 
way of speaking, they don’t altogether approve of 
me. An adventurer, a quack. That’s what they call 
me. Perhaps you can guess.” 

The young man could; but he could not speak— 
only look uneasy. 

“Oh, I know! You needn’t try to say they don’t 
—they do, But one of these days it’ll be different— 
when you come into the firm.” 

“When I come in, father?” He repeated the 
words slowly and with a kind of trembling resent- 
ment. “But I don’t know that I—I want to.” 

“Not want to?” Beech brought his great hand 
with its big diamond ring down on the table. “You 
can’t mean that—you’re not such a gump as that. 



40 


THE HOARDING 


Why—why!”—he seemed too astonished to find the 
appropriate words—“the ball’s at your feet. I’ve 
built that business up so that it’ll go like a spun 
wheel! It’s there . It’s a thing . What—what—yer 
don’t mean you’re such a born fool as to want to 
keep out and be—be ” 

“I thought I’d like to be a lawyer.” 

“A what? A lawyer? You! W 7 hat good would 
you be as a lawyer? You’re not the sort. Cold¬ 
blooded, that’s what those fellers are, every one of 
’em. No, I was going to say try again. But you 
don’t try again. You come in with me. I trained 
you for that. What did you get sent to Redburn for 
if it wasn’t to know how to behave with big men? 
I made a gentleman of you. But I didn’t make a 
gentleman of you so that you could go grubbing for 
dirty six-and-eightpences among filthy files of parch¬ 
ments. You’re coming in with me.” 

“But I’d really rather not, father.” 

The man stood up, looking at the boy. 

“I believe—I believe you really mean what you 
say. Not that I’m going to listen. I’ve too much 
regard for your real interests to listen. But I do 

believe that you mean it. So that-” he began to 

ruminate in an odd way of his own. “Tom, I’m 
thinking your mother was right.” 

“Mother—where does mother come into it?” 

“She said”—he noticed how his father’s voice 
had become soft and how all the vigour was out of 
his manner—‘ ‘ she said you’d kick. ... I said you 
wouldn’t. I didn’t say I wouldn’t let you. I said 




THE HOARDING 


41 


you’d never kick, because a man doesn’t quarrel 
with his bread and butter when there’s butter on 
both sides. Hut she said you’d kick. And d’you 
know this, Tom—d’yer know she wrote a bit of 
paper I was to give you if you did kick?” 

“He certainly had not anticipated opposition, be¬ 
cause he had not got the paper at hand,” thought 
his son. 

The man strode across to a locked desk, used a 
key, and at last came back with an envelope. 

Thrusting it into his son’s hand, he turned and 
walked out. A moment later the boy heard the out¬ 
side door close and the sound, outside, of his father’s 
retreating footsteps. He could always remember 
how his name, written in her hand, stood out before 
his unsteady gaze. A letter. ... It was like a letter 
from the other world. He could have expected 
some heavenly postmark. 

He almost hated to break the seal. But he did at 
last and began slowly to read. 

“My Darling Tom — I have a feeling that some 
day your father will want you to go into the busi¬ 
ness with him and that you will feel that you don’t 
want to. I think, though, that you’d like to.know 
how I felt. ...I’d like you to go to him if you can. 
And the things which I know you don’t like will 
seem less important some day than now. It is so 
easy when one is young to judge harshly and 
crudely. I think, Tom, dearest, you ought to go to 
your father.” 


42 


THE HOARDING 


There were a few more words and that was all. 

He got up and walked about the room. But he 
knew that the battle w T as over. 

Only years after did he wonder if he had been 
ambushed by a mother who loved her husband still 
more than she loved her son; only then did he ques¬ 
tion her right to intervene, to sacrifice him to the 
man whom she had loved with that strange passion 
of hers. 

But even now did he suffer a kind of wistful as¬ 
tonishment; his mother with her perceptions: how 
did she miss what he had seen or believed he had 
seen—the vulgarity, the essential absurdity of the 
means by which they lived. How had she continued 
that extraordinary idealization of a xnan practising 
a ridiculous and ignoble business—the business of 
advertising other people’s business . . . advertis¬ 
ing—that practice of coarse, blatant minds. 

All the same her letter had given him the law. 

He entered his father’s office at eighteen. Being 
there, he found, was quite as bad as he had expected; 
and added to his hatred of the place, the work, and 
the men with whom the work brought him in contact, 
he was penetrated by a sense of his own incompe¬ 
tence. The men whom he so much disliked despised 
him—were even contemptuously amused by his 
young, nervous hauteur; but they are not to be 
blamed if they did not trouble themselves to put 
business his way. “The old man—yes, a rough dia¬ 
mond,” they would say, “but a jewel all the same. 


THE HOARDING 


43 


But this chap! He can bring that nose of his a bit 
lower and begin to look less of a fool first.” 

Beech was vaguely aware of this hostility. But 
he did nothing—perhaps was not able to do any¬ 
thing—to abate it. Everything was still advertised 
in his father’s characters, and he turned away in 
sharp disgust. 

Then, quite suddenly, his father died. Heart. 
Business on earth at 12.30 noon, and no more busi¬ 
ness ever to be done on earth again after that. Died 
in his chair. 

Young Beech was not really young Beech any 
longer. He was twenty-eight. Any hopes he had 
had of starting in some other line had long been 
failing. His father had made his bed for him and 
he must lie in it. In other words, he had got to carry 
on the only profession he knew anything about. In 
a few years, if he saved, and was careful, it might be 
possible to get out—retire. 

Here, incidentally, is a curious trait to be noticed 
in the character of Beech: hating his father’s trade, 
he hated also the idea of living in what is called a 
“reduced way.” He had all the nervous pride of 
people of his kind. He had formed luxurious tastes, 
had his quiet club, and his good tailor; and if he 
retired now to live on the interest of the money his 
father had left he would have to change his way of 
living. He did not improve matters by taking a part 
of what his father had left him out of the three per 
cents (as they were then) and investing it in certain 
obscurely known South African industrials. 


44 


THE HOARDING 


“Don’t yon be a mug,” Bradder told him (Brad- 
der was an executor); “your father wouldn’t touch 
muck of that kind. ’ ’ 

64 1 think I ought to know my own business best. ’ ’ 

Bradder had shrugged his wide shoulders and said 
no more. He said nothing even when, as was bound 
to happen, the industrials first stopped paying a 
dividend and then went into liquidation. On his 
father’s death Beech had given up the house at 
Winstead and had taken a flat in some mansions in 
Haverstock Hill. He liked to be near libraries, the 
Queen’s Hall, and his club. But he found he was 
spending money. He also found that business was 
beginning to decline. He knew he was not at ease, 
or even ordinarily amiable, in the company of the 
men who had business to give out; and that, even 
when he went out, as he did at rare intervals, to try 
to pick up business, they thought him difficult of 
comprehension. And, to such, a man who is not 
easily comprehensible is ridiculous. One or two, for 
his father’s sake, offered him commissions; but 
when he set himself to write out their advertise¬ 
ments he was insensibly hindered by a self-con¬ 
sciousness, a certain horrible literary fastidiousness, 
which brought him to grief whenever he tried a 
flight of necessary vulgarity. He would begin again 
then, using stiff, essay-like English, and produce a 
long screed of a kind to justify the remark of Bil- 
son’s Boot Polish, “Thought you’d joined ‘The 
Times’ and were doing a leader on the advantages 
of polish, till I stumbled on our name.” 


THE HOARDING 


45 


Finally lie would attempt a feeble, vulgar strain, 
a thin familiarity of diction, an emasculate common¬ 
ness which disgusted the educated—himself most of 
all—while it earned the contempt of the vulgar. 

His business was going down. That was clear. 
Some of his best men, too (his father had employed 
four canvassers), had left him, and he had not filled 
their places. Which brings us to another of this 
man’s troubles. During his father’s lifetime, even 
he had had a nervous suspicion that the staff—his 
own staff—did not take him very seriously; and 
when he succeeded to authority he confirmed his 
suspicion. Those canvassers who had gone had told 
him flippantly and without veiling their contempt 
that they could work for his father but not for him. 
“Got to go where there’s scope,” one of them had 
said. 

“Go then,” he had cried furiously. He used to 
sit there figuratively biting nails in a wild, weak 
fury. Like all weak men, his accusation was not 
against himself but against Fate. He had been 
trapped, he told himself, by Life. It never occurred 
to him to consider whether, as a matter of fact, the 
door of the trap had not been left open—for years; 
whether, for the sake of certain comforts—natural 
comforts . . . that could not be spared—whether 
for the lack of a little courage to face a world of the 
unknown ... he had waited. 

But his plaint ran still. . . . There was he who 
ought to have been living a life of quiet leisure— 
there was he sitting in this private office scarcely 


46 


THE HOARDING 


shut off from those impudent swine . . . and losing 
his business, losing such income as was left to him. 

True he had still got the Kingford’s Cocoa con¬ 
nexion. But not all of it now. Kingfords had be¬ 
gun to hint, and had then given away a contract 
to another. He had seen an advertisement which 
he had known was his own; he had rung up King- 
ford himself. . . . He had not been able to suppress 
a certain protest. And there was Kingford, smooth¬ 
spoken, at the other end. 

“It’s quite all right. We—we want more pep. 
Oh, yes! we’ll give you business still. Some busi¬ 
ness.” 

And once it had been all their business. There 
might yet come a day. . . . 


II 

Boxrider had agreed with himself from the begin¬ 
ning to despise that man down there in D. Bringing 
off his own first small successes, he used to wonder 
what kept Beech alive. “Doesn’t look as if he knew 
the first thing.” And really Beech didn’t. You 
could see him any morning drifting in about ten, 
his figure irresolute, his air apologetic. “I was 
meant to be a gentleman and I’m trying to be a 
cheap-jack, and I’m not doing it effectively.” 

Something like that may have represented his 
thought. It was his curious habit to explain him¬ 
self, when he had to do so for a directory, as “a gen¬ 
eral agent.” He had not the smallest idea of what 



THE HOARDING 


47 


the term meant; but at least he did not own himself 
an advertising agent. On his door he called himself 
merely “Beech—Agent.*’ So that not everybody 
knew that he handled advertising. And yet there 
were moments when he would have a wish to in¬ 
crease his business—hate it though he did. The 
truth was that his connexions still dwindled. So 
that to-day the only important connexion he had—• 
and it was one which he now shared with two other 
firms—was the Kingford one. Kingfords still gave 
him business—as they put it—“for his father’s 
sake.” It gave him no pleasure to be told that: he 
would have liked to forget his father, and to have 
felt that the world also had forgotten him. 

Kingfords of late had increased their hints that 
they would like to see a little more vigour in his 
propaganda. He had said he would see to it; but 
he did not know that he could claim that he had seen 
to it. And if he lost Kingfords he was done for. 
Moreover, on Kingfords and such other business as 
he could maintain depended his chance of retirement. 
He alone knew how he dreamed of that day of release 
—the day when he would have acquired the sum 
which would buy him the annuity on which he could 
live in approved retirement for the rest of his life. 

And now the hope by which he had been kept up 
seemed slowly to be sinking. He saw himself now 
feebly hanging on to such poor remnants as he had, 
and then one day finding his support gone and him¬ 
self swallowed up. His spirit explored dark possi¬ 
bilities; again he saw Life in terms of a gigantic 


48 


THE HOARDING 


unfairness. All the things he could have enjoyed 
had been withheld: leisure, culture, and (in the real 
sense) marriage. . . . 

He flushed. Yes, marriage. He could have been 
happy with an understanding woman. Starved . . . 
yes. His face would grow dark . . . and no new 
business ever came. In a moment of passionate 
energy—the kind that alone was characteristic—he 
wrote out an order to a sign-writer to come and 
declare him an “advertising agent”—“advertise¬ 
ments may be inserted in the press throughout the 
world”—but when he read the legend it seemed so 
flat compared with the kind of thing his father used 
to put up that he tore up the letter. . . . And there 
was that young swine on the other staircase, a mere 
vulgarian, a creature risen out of some neighbour¬ 
ing gutter ... a man like—yes, like his own huck¬ 
ster father . . . and that young man, only at the 
work three months, would rank him as a fool and a 
failure. What was the name of the fellow? (He had 
taken the trouble to inquire because of a suspicion 
that people who came to the building with a vague 
idea that there was an advertising agent somewhere 
on the premises went upstairs rather than to his 
office.) . . . 

Boxrider! That was it. Well, to this Boxrider 
the matter of that legend upon the door would be 
the simplest of affairs: a mere preliminary. He 
understood that this Boxrider was what the world 
called, in its sordid idiom, “getting on.” 

In this ignoblest of means of livelihood it seemed 


THE HOARDING 


49 


odd to believe that there could be degrees of success. 
His contempt for his job prevented his being seri¬ 
ously troubled by a sense of the other ’s rivalry; and 
so he did not actually hate Boxrider. He used to say 
to himself that he pitied any man who could volun¬ 
tarily have entered such a “profession.” It gave 
him a moment of thin, cynical amusement to call his 
occupation a “profession.” 

4ft 

III 

To Boxrider, Beech remained for a month or two 
“that fellow in D.” He understood the man was in 
the same line as himself, but he was not really in¬ 
terested. Boxrider was, in his own words, “out for 
the big stuff.” He meant to model himself on 
Crocks Ltd., who had those big four windows in the 
Strand and “projected publicity for ‘Tip-Top Tea,’ 
i Rex’s Starch,’ 4 Tranquillity’ underwear, and 
‘Runnagate-on-Sea.’ ” “Beech,” he tossed the 
name impatiently from him. Boxriders have no use 
for the little men who offer to insert fifty advertise¬ 
ments in the provincial press—the “Wigan Weekly 
Examiner,” the “Keighley Gazette,” the “Croydon 
Review,” for an infinitesimal sum. 

It was Higgs—with whom his curious intimacy 
continued—that gave him a new and remarkable 
idea. They were going up in the lift one morning 
two months after Boxrider’s establishment here. 

“There was another two lots that came ’ere ask¬ 
ing for you. Took ’em up myself yesterday.” 


50 


THE HOARDING 


“Yes, I got them.” 

“Well, but at one time it wouldn’t ’ev been you 
they’d ’ev been arfter. They’d be arfter that other 
party—Mr. Beech in D.” 

“Oh, indeed?” said Boxrider, who for some rea¬ 
son seemed interested to-day. 

“But thet was because of ’is father. It was thet 
fur coat as did it then. Mr. Beech that is, ’e don’t 
wear no fur coat,” continued this philosopher, play¬ 
ing with a fact the significance of which has occupied 
intelligences more complex and distinguished. “But 
some of ’em still goes to ’im from remembering ’is 
father, and because, too, they knows ’e ’es the run¬ 
ning of that there Kingford’s Cocoa-” 

“What?” cried Boxrider. “You mean”—but he 
had already mastered a sudden excitement; there 
were things which one should not allow one’s voice 
to give away—“you mean that Kingfords let him do 
their business nowf” 

“Well, yes, though ’e keeps it dark. So the lift 
in D was telling me. Kingfords—I ’eppen to take it 
myself of an evening to keep the cold out; it’s better 
than Boggs’, I always think, and so I was a-telling 
the lift in D, and ’e sez, 4 S’pose yer didn’t know thet 
thet Beech that we ’as ’ere writes some of ’em very 
adverts, for that very Kingfords?’ An’ he does, 
only, as I sez, ’e don’t seem to talk abaht it.” 

Boxrider did not profess further to be interested, 
but he was profoundly so. He was so interested 
that he took to observing Beech from the window; 
in fact, he gave much of his rather too considerable 



THE HOARDING 


51 


leisure to that observation, and he came to have an 
idea of the extent of the business. 

This idea differed somewhat from his first notion: 
there could be no doubt that while Beech had not a 
big clientele, it was quite a valuable one. It had 
been that father of his who had given it to him. If 
he (Boxrider) heard aright, the hopeless ass was 
ready to despise his father! He did some work in 
the provinces for “Tranquillity” underwear, he did 
copy for “Bright’s Office Furniture,” and, much the 
most important of all, he did some of Kingford’s 
work. It was what might be called a very sound 
foundation—for a young man with an under¬ 
standing. 

All the same, I do not know that that idea really 
came at once. But things that happened, or did not 
happen, made it easier for the idea to grow. The 
fact is the people who had given him something to 
do in response to his importunities were of the kind 
that seem big, but that are small. There are hun¬ 
dreds such, filling the columns of the press or hang¬ 
ing their blatant legends across the hoardings. 
They stake their little beggarly all in the one throw 
of the dice—take the front page of the “Daily 
Home,” even if it involves an overdraft; and hope 
for luck. There are some very big people who were 
very small people a short time ago, and who grew 
big from little because they risked everything on 
some wild, spendthrift action. But there are more 
little people who grow somewhat less little each year 
by means of some occasional small effort. The 



52 THE HOARDING 

“Bobs** lounge chair was of that kind. They would 
not have anything else for Boxrider for six months. 
“Oh, yes! Perfectly satisfied with your work, and 
we’ll give you another job when we can. But w T e’re 
not ‘Tranquillity’ or ‘Kingford.’ ” 

No, they were not Kingford. That was precisely 
it. And nobody else who happened to blow in hap¬ 
pened to be Kingford. And if you wanted to open 
up with the big houses it was necessary to have as 
client somebody who was Kingford—or of King- 
ford’s kind. Once you get one of these big fish on 
your hook you could fill your basket. 

So, you see, the idea, if it did not come at once, 
did come. 

IV 

Beech sat in the unnecessarily large office, as he 
considered it, which his father had occupied in other 
days. The more blatant decorations wherewith the 
senior Beech had sought to impress clients or pros¬ 
pective clients had been removed. The carpet woven 
to represent the Union Jack—“the best bit of pub¬ 
licity ever invented,” as his father used to call that 
national flag—had been removed to give place to a 
drab green Axminster. The illuminated address 
presented to his complacent parent by neighbours 
on his departure from an earlier home at Clapton— 
an address which had testified in extremely adula¬ 
tory terms to its hero’s “sterling worth, upright 
character and far-reaching influence” (it was, of 
course, the adulatory touch which had entirely filled 


THE HOARDING 


53 


with nausea the son)—this address had been thrust 
down behind the safe. The coloured pictures of 
Queen Victoria and of types of the British Army 
had been surreptitiously given away to the lift in 
D, while only the framed picture of an insipid-look¬ 
ing, chinless young man (circa 1885), with side 
whiskers and a coat too small for him, who had ap¬ 
parently been surprised in the act of sipping King- 
ford’s, was suffered to remain upon the walls. This 
vision of youth had this obscure antiquarian inter¬ 
est that it was the first pictorial representation of 
the popularity of Kingfords. 

Beech kept a staff of three. Item .—A clerk in 
middle life, James by name, who had been office boy 
in the time of Beech, senior. This weary, mottled 
James kept the books and could, when put to it, turn 
out an advertisement of a certain approved pattern. 
Item .—Bexley, a younger man somewhat overgrown, 
with a long, sloping forehead, pale blue eyes with a 
statically impertinent expression, and a pimpled chin 
and neck, both much exacerbated, who collected the 
accounts, bargained for space, and generally repre¬ 
sented the house out of doors. Item. —Matthew, a 
Jewish youth, upon whom Bexley inflicted the cur¬ 
rent jest against the chosen people, to the subtle 
amusement of the Hebrew himself, who had, of 
course, from the first, shared in the secret of his 
race that it is theirs to suffer—and to come out on 
top. 

Beech, who instinctively craved for feminine sym¬ 
pathy, would have liked to have kept a woman typist, 


54 


THE HOARDING 


but never had had the courage to engage one. Even 
as things stood it was a question whether his weak 
hand controlled the reins, or whether the steeds di¬ 
rected their master. And then suddenly, almost vio¬ 
lently, at a quarter past ten o’clock on a dark 
morning in November—on what must be called an 
historic morning, dark enough for a thousand golden 
eyes to come to a thousand windows and peer out 
in curiosity at the gloom (there certainly was not 
a warehouse in this part of London where the lights 
were not up)—there presented himself at the counter 
in this office, before the inspection of the smiling 
Jew, a young man. The office boy had begun to 
smile before he had discovered the visitor. Bexley 
had been reciting: 

The Jew stood on the burning deck 
Whence all but he had fled, 

But any sheeny’d risk his neck 
To see the fire was fed- 

At this point Matthew had discovered he was wanted 
at the counter. But he still smiled, and he did not 
seem to require the name of the caller. 

“Mr. Beech? Yes, sir.” (Only Matthew said 
“thir.”) “It’s Mr. Boxrider, isn’t it?” 

Boxrider it was. That was the beginning of an 
historical incident. 

And now in the doorway of Beech’s private room 
stood that Hebrew, smiling with the rather magnilo¬ 
quent cheerfulness of a race that knows it is going to 
win. 



THE HOARDING 


55 


“Who?” cried Beech— twittered, one might al¬ 
most say. 1 ‘ I—haven’t any appointment to see him. 
Don’t know him either. I’m—I’m too busy. Say 
that. I don’t desire to see him.” 

“Which am I to say, sir?” asked Matthew impu¬ 
dently enough. 

As has been suggested, it was to Beech a source of 
humiliation which yet he dared not acknowledge 
that his staff treated him lightly. And meeting the 
eye of that boy for the brief moment in which he 
dared to meet it, he let himself be reminded that the 
smile would not have been there if his father had 
been sitting where he sat. 

He felt suddenly appalled by the thought of his 
own weakness in the mere handling of an office staff. 
It seemed, too, as if at the moment memories and 
impressions must crowd in upon him—as if, at least, 
some subconscious self realized the profound signifi¬ 
cance of the immediate occasion. . . . How these 
ideas came. James. Just the other side of the door, 
James. James would spend an hour out in the mid¬ 
dle of the morning and assume the air of the old 
trusted employee if remonstrated with. “I think, 
Mr. Beech” (with great dignity), “considering I 

was with your father-” and Beech would give 

way with a kind of groan. But all the time he would 
know that James was laughing at him out of doors, 
and even of late in company with Bexley. As for 
Bexley, his glib impertinences were so general that 
a dozen times his employer had sought courage to 
dismiss him. Only he had an idea that Bexley 



56 


THE HOARDING 


did a good deal of useful work for the firm and 
was beginning to be that dreadful thing called 
i i indispensable.’ ’ 

These ideas swept through his brain again as they 
had done often before as he sat back turning his 
uneasy eye quickly away from that of that wretched, 
smiling Jew. 

But Matthew still waited for some answer—some 
definite answer. “He’s enjoying my confusion,” 
thought Beech; “he’s waiting for me to struggle 
out of it; he’s watching me.” 

“Say I’m too busy.” 

“Yes, sir.” 

The young Jew came out slamming the door be¬ 
hind him and went across to Boxrider. 

“He says” (with a grin) “he’s too busy, sir.” 

“Take that grin off and go back and tell him the 
matter’s very urgent. ’ ’ 

Matthew, with some attempt to suppress the of¬ 
fending smile, returned to his employer. He was 
delighted to have an opportunity to maintain an 
annoyance. 

“He says he must see you, sir. Matter’s very 
urgent. ’ ’ 

Beech sprang up in nervous fury. 

“Bring him in then! Bring him in then!” 

Still smiling, Matthew went back. 

A moment later there in the doorway was that 
young, bright-eyed visitor with the smiling face and 
the hand out; and, opposite him the nervous, hesi- 


THE HOARDING 


57 


tant host—if yon can call him that—excited and con¬ 
fused, and certainly unfriendly. 

‘ ‘Yes, well—what is it?” 

Boxrider, before answering, half turned, discov¬ 
ered as he had expected, that the Jew waited to 
overhear, watched Matthew carefully out of the 
room, and then, as carefully, closed the door. 

“I dare say you think I’m officious,” he said, “but 
what I’ve got to say is private, sir.” 

Beech began uncomfortably to pull a chair. 

“Then you’d better sit down.” 

“Well, yes,” said Boxrider coolly. “I think I’d 
better sit down.” He paused, looked round the office 
easily, and then, “I’ve got a proposition which I’m 
going to ask you to consider carefully. We’re both 
in the same line. We use the same address. But 
I’ve reached the point when I want to expand. I 
suggest that we don’t compete against one another. 
I suggest that we amalgamate!” 

V 

The condition of the mind of Beech when he sat 
listening to those short sentences, and when he heard 
uttered, in a tone appropriate rather to a comment 
on the weather than to an idea almost grotesquely 
revolutionary, the final proposition, must have been 
something worth diagnosing. This upstart, this no¬ 
body, this intruder, risen nobody knew where, with 
who knew what kind of a connexion, to come here 



58 


THE HOARDING 


and think himself . . . etc., etc., etc. You can let 
your imagination range. There is nothing that he 
may not have thought with that dilated imagination 
of his, that quick febrile intelligence with its readi¬ 
ness to excitement. If the human psychology could 
be set to respond to a diagrammatic indicator, what 
prodigious divergences from the middle line the 
mind movements of Beech would have shown! 

Of course, the idea was impossible, preposterous, 
unheard of; every cliche in the vocabulary of refusal 
must have been taken out and used. But an original 
mind welcomes refusals and objections, as the tramp 
the familiar difficulties of the road. They must have 
talked for an hour, the three clerks listening all the 
time to remote murmurs, listening and hoping for a 
bell to ring. 

“What’s it all about?” Bexley whispered to 
James. 

“Don’t know. But that young Boxrider chap’ll 
lurn ’im inside out if ’e wants to.” 

Bexley grinned. “That wouldn’t be very hard.” 

“No, you’re right. ’E is a boss to ’ave, isn’t ’e?” 

They both smirked—James in the rather unclean 
way of his mind. They usually smirked when they 
talked of Beech. 

And in the meantime the pair within talked. 
Whether Beech believed in modern miracles, I do 
not know; but that he could only explain the result 
of that talk in terms of miracle, I’m pretty sure. 
He was bemused for days after, thinking about it. 


THE HOARDING 


59 


For what happened was this: he agreed. He 
(Beech), with a business twenty years old behind 
his back, agreed to make partner in equality with 
himself a boy, a vulgar youth of whom he knew 
nothing and for whom he cared less—and agreed 
without even bargaining for time to consider. The 
thing to him was utterly inexplicable. There he had 
been sitting armed against this intruder, and within 
five minutes of Boxrider *s advancing his first propo¬ 
sition, he (Beech) was listening even eagerly! Yes, 
that would be sound; and that would be good. The 
idea that two heads are better, etc., was too obvious 
to be controverted; and of course it would promote 
further business if, etc. You can see the thing which 
Boxrider would serve up. And Boxrider could be 
unctuous enough when he chose. 

All the same, when Boxrider had got away with a 
signed agreement in his pocket on which to base the 
deed of partnership, Beech, lying back in his chair, 
the better to sustain himself against the wave of 
reaction which must now sweep over him, discov¬ 
ered that he was involved in a mere confusion rather 
than in a sense of distaste. And later, when he had 
had time to reflect, he remembered certain things— 
particularly that business was leaving him. Well, 
this Boxrider should help to hold what they had. 
He had never got any new business—he had hated 
the character of the work too much. Boxrider would 
get new business. Finally, Boxrider could be 
“turned on” to deal with the staff. 

This last reflection gave his mind immense ease, 


60 


THE HOARDING 


and he remembered with sudden satisfaction a pic¬ 
ture the new partner had drawn. 

“'You’ll be able to give less attention to the office. 
I should think that a man with your education and 
so on would like more time for your books and 
things . 9 9 

He smiled to himself; to have the money and yet 
not have to do the filthy work! And it really was 
very discerning of Boxrider to see so clearly that he 
(Beech) was different from the type of men ordi¬ 
narily to be found in this so-called “profession.’’ 

Fortified by this reflection, Beech at this time 
really was ready to approve Boxrider and to be con¬ 
tent with what seemed to be promised! 

And Boxrider after this coup d 9 etat t That signed 
half-sheet of note-paper embodying briefly the terms 
of the settlement indicates something. He had 
known very little about Beech—which fact only goes 
the better to point his shrewdness. A nervous, con¬ 
scientious man, a man who would hold to what he 
had undertaken—set his hand to. That was his con¬ 
clusion. Get Beech to sign, and even if the paper 
could be repudiated, even if it did not constitute a 
regular agreement, it would be allowed to stand. 
All the same, if the bargain was a good one for him¬ 
self, it was, he was quite sure, a better one for 
Beech. He intended that Beech should discover it 
to be so. He had precise notions, one gathers, about 
many things. He had a precise notion of the duty 
of a partner. He would do very well by Beech. 


THE HOARDING 


61 


It was arranged that Boxrider should come into 
the Beech office at once, and there next morning he 
was. The staff surveyed him in astonishment. 
Beech had not then arrived. 

The Jew came forward, and there was fresh aston¬ 
ishment to see that young man who had called and 
taken so long about it the day before cross the office 
and make for the principal’s room. 

‘ 4 He’s not come yet. You’ll have to wait.” The 
Jew had tried silently to intervene, but it was Bexley 
who had spoken. 

“What?” said Boxrider, stopping suddenly. 
“You don’t mean Mr. Beech hasn’t told you?” 

“Told us?” James, turning suddenly on his 
stool, contributed to the incident for the first time. 
He was heavily and lazily contemptuous, as he al¬ 
ways was. “Told us?” and then with a little flush 
and a kind of surprise, “What has Mr. Beech to 
tell us, if it isn’t asking?” 

“It is asking. And you’d better ask differently 
another time,” said Boxrider sharply. “But since 
you don’t know—your chief has got a partner and 
you’ve got a new chief.” 

He eyed James shrewdly as he spoke, and knew at 
once what he had been ready to suspect—that the 
clerk’s outlook was seriously disturbed. (“Thought 
he’d bully Beech into giving him a partnership some 
some day.”) 

But, as Boxrider reflected, there was likely to be a 
good deal of disturbance—and not only in the mind 
of James: his partner himself had probably had only 


62 


THE HOARDING 


the first of a series of shocks. He meant to do well 
by Beech, but there must inevitably be certain 
disturbances. 

Immediately to be considered was this failure on 
the part of Beech to tell the staff. It argued some¬ 
thing surely, and not only irresolution in the master. 
Part of the explanation seemed apparent before the 
master’s arrival. And, indeed, he passed over the 
incident lightly enough when Beech stumbled in upon 
him in the private office. 

“I introduced myself—since you weren’t here to 
do it.” 

“Oh, yes! ’Fraid I forgot—omitted to tell them 
yesterday.” 

Boxrider watched the face of the man delivering 
the explanation, nodded, and turned to his work. 
But later in the day he contrived to murmur: 

“By the way, Beech”—he had been resolved to 
drop the honorific from the beginning; he did not 
know how Beech would like it, but it had got to be— 
“by the way, as I’m junior pard I think I ought to 
run the staff, eh?” 

Beech looked up. He didn’t want to show his re¬ 
lief too clearly. And he turned, in his irritable way, 
for a moment apparently considering. 

“Well—perhaps. Yes, I think you might do that, 
Boxrider, coming to me only when you are in 
difficulties. ’ ’ 

Boxrider did not laugh. But during the next few 
days he kept his eyes very wide open. He had de¬ 
cided to begin with Bexley. Bexley, he discovered, 



THE HOARDING 


63 


used to disappear at ten on account collecting. He 
also discovered that the accounts to be collected were 
unfortunately not numerous enough to require an 
hour of concentrated effort. And one morning within 
a week, his partner not having arrived, he rang the 
bell. 

“Tell Bexley.” 

“Now then, Bexley, about those accounts.” 

“Yes.” 

Boxrider looked up quickly. “It’s ‘sir’ when 
you’re talking to me, Bexley. Got that?” 

“Yes, sir.” 

“Now we’ll get on with it. You go out collecting 
accounts each morning at ten. You’re back here 
at eleven-thirty?” 

“But I’ve always had the morning.” 

“You’ll get a lifetime as far as I’m concerned if 
you give me any more of your back chat.” 

“Mr. Beech—sir-” 

“I know all about Mr. Beech. I’m junior partner 
here, and as such it’s my job to run the staff. I’m 
doing it at Mr. Beech’s desire. Not that,” reflec¬ 
tively, “now I come to think of it, I need explain to 
anyone of your kind. Only as I don’t know that 
you’d get a job elsewhere-” 

“Oh, yes, I would, sir!” 

“Very well. One month from to-day. That’ll do 
now. You can cut.” 

Later in the day, though, there was a sequel. 

“I beg your pardon, sir.” It was a hesitating 
Bexley who stood in the doorway. 




64 


THE HOARDING 


“Yes?” sharply from Boxrider. “Knock when 
yon come in here again.” 

“Yes, sir.” 

“Well, what is it now?” 

“I wondered, sir, if you’d let me withdraw my 
notice.” 

“Your notice? You didn’t give it—yon got it, 
my friend.” 

Bexley was getting confused. 

“I mean that, sir. If you’d let it be as it was.” 

“You want to stay?” 

“Yes, sir.” 

“On my terms?” 

“Yes, sir.” 

“You’ve spat up all that rot about what you used 
to do and so on?” 

“Yes, sir.” 

“Well, I don’t know that I’m justified. But I’ll 
give you one more chance.” 

“Thank you very much, sir.” 

Bexley began to withdraw when suddenly he heard 
himself called back. Boxrider was studying him 
curiously. 

“I suppose it’s a girl, eh?” 

“Well, yes, sir. If I lost my job-” 

“Want to get married, eh?” 

“Yes, sir.” 

“How much has Mr. Beech been paying you?” 

“Forty-five six and a small commission.” 

“I see.” For a moment he considered. “Well, 
look here, Bexley. I don’t know that I’m right in 



THE HOARDING 


65 


'doing so after your rank idiocy. But we ’ll make it 
sixty-five as long as you’re here. But remember 
you’re here on trial.” 

“Yes, sir. Thank you very much indeed, sir.” 

“I’ve got him/’ was how the new partner put it to 
himself then. But there was the rest of the staff to 
deal with. He had been watching Matthew, and 
when that youth came into the inner office one morn¬ 
ing he put down his pen and looking up met Mat¬ 
thew’s smiling eye. 

“Look here, Matthew. I suppose you can’t help 
that grin.” 

“I’m not grinning, sir.” 

“Well, perhaps you don’t call it a grin. But I do, 
and if you can’t wash it off, you’ll have to quit— 
that’s all.” 

Matthew nodded and—grinned. 

Next morning when Bexley appeared he learnt 
that Matthew had left and wasn’t coming back. 

VI 

But there was still James. Boxrider began to 
watch James. To himself James paid an obscure 
kind of deference; Beech the clerk ignored. Ap¬ 
parently he had made up his mind years before about 
the son of his first employer. Young Beech simply 
did not count. (He had been “young” Beech then.) 

Coming in one day suddenly Boxrider overheard 
the end of a conversation. Beech was sitting at the 
desk nervously fingering a paper-knife and looking 


66 


THE HOARDING 


the complete culprit, while his middle-aged clerk 
lounged easily, hands in pockets. 

6 6 1 wish—I wish you could sometimes be in in the 
morning when I want you, Mr. James.’’ 

Boxrider had an idea that Beech had been screw¬ 
ing himself up for the encounter all the day before. 

“I wasn’t aware I was wanted,” said James 
slowly. “I get the work done, and I suppose that’s 
all that’s required.” 

“ Well, please try—to be in oftener. I might want 
you as I did to-day.” 

“Oh, well, right-o!” The heavy clerk lounged up 
as Boxrider entered. 

Boxrider said nothing to his partner, but next 
morning he was down early—at 9 o’clock, in fact. 
At 9.5 he rang the bell. 

“Bexley, tell Mr. James I want him.” 

“He’s not here yet, sir.” 

“ Oh! Tell him I want him as soon as he arrives. ’ ’ 

James turned up as usual about ten minutes to 
ten, and getting the message per Bexley strolled 
easily to the private office door. Boxrider rejoiced 
that his partner had not yet arrived. He meant to 
show James something. 

“Oh, good morning, James!” James looked up. 
By a kind of unwritten understanding he had been 
“Mr. James” to Beech. 

“Good morning,” he said slowly. 

“I’ve something to say, James. Several things. 
The first is when you come in here in future I must 
ask you to knock.” 


THE HOARDING 


67 


“No,” began James, “I’ve never had to do that. 
It’s understood.” 

“Is it? Well, I’m afraid it isn’t any more. I’m 
in charge of the staff here now; I must really ask 
you to understand that. And there is another point. 
Not of supreme importance. But one that has its 
bearing on discipline. When you speak to me I wish 
you to say ‘sir’.” 

a j_>> 

“It isn’t a point to discuss. You understand my 
wish?” The room vibrated with his energy. 

“Well, yes, I understand you.” 

“That’s all right,” said Boxrider coolly. “Now 
we’ll get on. I’m going to keep a book. It is my 
wish that you sign on every morning at 9 o’clock.” 

A flush was coming into James’ cheek. “What’s 
that mean? What’s that for?” 

“Because I find you’re not to be trusted, James. 
You come in here at 10 o’clock, though you’re paid 
to be here at 9.” 

“Suppose I say I don’t like that idea of a book— 
that I couldn’t begin.” 

“Oh,” answered Boxrider mildly, “then you 
wouldn’t get the chance to begin! I should hate to 
do it. You’ve been here a long time. But some¬ 
body’s got to be in command, and if you couldn’t 
agree to obey orders, I don’t see any other course 
open than to ask you to take the usual month’s 
notice. ’ ’ 

“You mean you’d try to send me off?” 

“Try?” repeated Boxrider smiling. “Look here, 



68 


THE HOARDING 


James. I might say, ‘Don’t you talk about try or 
I will get your notice now/ But I won’t say that. 
I’ll just point out to you that you haven’t quite done 
things on the square, and that I think you might 
consider whether, seeing that you are senior, you 
couldn’t set a better example.” 

James frowned, then smiled. He had already 
mistaken the intent of Boxrider’s studied mildness. 
His manner continued easy. “I shall see Mr. Beech 
about this,” he said. Suddenly Boxrider stiffened, 
though he retained his control of the situation. 

“I don’t think I’d worry Mr. Beech, if I were you. 
You see, James,” he said, very slowly, “it would be 
me you’d be under afterwards. And, seriously, I 
don’t recommend you to oppose me.” 

He paused and smiled again, and James nodded. 

Suddenly his manner changed; he grew submis¬ 
sive. 

“Very well, sir. I’ll see to the book. Is there 
anything else?” 

There may have been a carefully veiled irony in 
that inquiry; if there was Boxrider chose to ignore it. 

The man went back to the outer office. But reach¬ 
ing his desk he seemed to do no work, and Bexley, 
contriving a glance over in his direction, saw that 
the veins on his big forehead were swollen. 

Left alone, Boxrider drew a long breath. An un¬ 
pleasant job had been done. A drastic operation 
had had to be performed, and it had now been per¬ 
formed. No longer would Beech be the object of 
overt and petty insult. 


CHAPTER V 


I 

The “Woman’s Reform Club” was, in those days, 
situated high up in a building off the Strand—a club 
with a vague title to its name, but where professional 
women talked good trades-unionism and where 
visitors from outside (there were a number here to¬ 
night) looked about them with a naive expectation 
which was flattering enough to the objects of it. 

People began to float in from the dining-room, 
carrying the chairs they had sat in to dine, because 
what chairs were available in the big room were 
already filled. Three women to one man, and all 
lumbering in with chairs. And when all were settled, 
or nearly so, in long uneven lines of evening toilets, 
there is a flutter, a small woman in black leads the 
way in, and following her comes that celebrity of our 
own time, Coleton—Claude Coleton —the Coleton as 
one might say. A tall, extraordinarily handsome 
person, with that proper economy of feature which 
nature practises in her best work. A smallish, well- 
set head with the dark hair brushed back, a quick, 
intrusive eye—you couldn’t deny that —and about 
the lips what might have seemed to one looking very 
closely and instructed to suspect, a carefully prac¬ 
tised melancholy. A woman sitting in the front row 

C9 


70 


THE HOARDING 


turned a head quickly: that sudden sound of an in¬ 
drawing of breath behind her had touched her 
curiosity; who was sitting there ? 

Why that pair! “How are you, Miss Senior, . . . 
Mrs. Graeme,” smiles, nods, the ordinary exchange; 
and the woman in the front row no longer seemed 
curious. 

A well-contrasted pair, by the way, that. The 
“Miss Senior” a tall brown-haired young woman 
with quiet, steady grey eyes and round pale cheeks, 
and an air of eagerness struggling with a natural 
reticence, a girl with long brown fingers, the fingers 
of an artist: an ingenue, though a creature full 
of promise—promise waiting fulfilment, physical, 
spiritual. In grey—a grey indefinably appropriate, 
a veil obscurely seen to be proper to the character 
beyond. . . . 

And the other of the pair, the blonde. Golden 
haired, with those deep blue eyes which turn grey 
when the skies of life turn. A woman with the 
creamy skin of her kind. ... A person with at¬ 
mosphere obviously, who might make circles and 
draw you within with a beckon of that small in¬ 
finitely white hand. Just now a woman breathing 
rather hard once or twice. And in the meantime 
Coleton was being led upon the dais. Mrs. Trellfall, 
writer of distinguished essays, was murmuring wel¬ 
come to the male celebrity—for there were plenty 
of the feminine kind here—in a tender, bell-like voice. 
They all knew his subject, and some of them ap¬ 
proved his views—“with reservations.” There was 



THE HOARDING 


71 


laughter to that. She did not need to remind them 
that the subject he had made his own was what 
might he called a Renaissance of Reticence—that 
reticence which was so finely characteristic of the 
national character. 

“Mr. Coleton holds extreme views on what is 
called to-day, by people who seek, as he would say, 
to make a bad thing seem less bad, Publicity. I am 
old enough to remember a time when a person who 
used the Press to push himself. . . . Some of you 
perhaps would not go as far as Mr. Coleton in con¬ 
demning all kinds of advertising. Frankly, if I must 
use the word, publicity may seem to some of us—a 
necessary thing . . .” and so forth. 

Then a few words of welcome to the guest, and 
finally there, smiling and confident, stood Coleton. 
For the first time an observer might have qualified 
his earlier satisfaction in the fact of that economy 
of feature, that absence of over-emphasis, which he 
had first approved. Flung out the better to deliver 
the address, the man’s figure now seemed a degree 
or two fuller than was admirable, and the critical 
eye, still readjusting impressions, might have dwelt 
for a moment on the lips—seemingly very slightly 
more protuberant than one had believed before, red¬ 
der, more moist. But a handsome figure . . . most 
handsome . . . and that dark eye . . . that melan¬ 
choly air. . . . 

And really not ungallant? Women’s eyes observed 
him, knowing him for the most generally attractive 
bachelor. . . . Oh, yes, certainly a bachelor! Nat- 



72 


THE HOARDING 


urally there were names one heard. And stories. 
The effect was the more exciting. But in essence 
a gentleman of the old nobilities, a Galahad—gay, 
ready for admiration, but true to the fine reticence 
of another time. Of course there were things in his 
books—but then a man had to write of what he 
saw. . . . 

Coleton was beginning with smiling challenges. 
There must be some of them who dissented from 
him, who felt towards him as the Stuarts did to the 
Puritans. 

“I, ladies and gentlemen, am not ashamed to own 
myself, in these things, a Puritan.” There was 
laughter at this. Perhaps some remembered pas¬ 
sages in that last book “The Dream in the Desert.” 

‘ ‘ Take the publicity—I apologize, as our chairman 
did, for the word—the publicity of which members 
of my own profession seem to approve. Now, I hold 
that it is no more the business of the public to know 
a single detail of the life of a writer of the books it 
reads then it is to possess itself of information about 
the compositor who sets up the book. Some of you 
on the other hand will, I suppose, argue that this 
publicity is innocent, and that even if it is not inno¬ 
cent it is necessary. Your books are not read if your 
face, as seen in the ‘Illustrated,’ be not to be read 
also. Your work is unknown if your home-life is 
hidden.” Later came denunciation. 

“What is this publicity? It is making ignoble 
and disgusting the noble profession of Literature. 
It is turning artists into quack-medicine men; it 


THE HOARDING 


73 


takes a writer out of his study and sets him up in a 
soiled astrakhan coat and with sham diamond rings 
on his fingers in the market-place. If tea and cocoa 
and underclothing must be sold by piling up noise 
and display, I suppose I cannot hope to forbid it— 
though I should travel a long way to avoid this pub¬ 
licity, and I would very willingly see established for 
general use a pledge by which one abstained from 
purchasing any article the qualities of which were 
pressed upon one by blatant announcements, either 
on hoardings or in the Press. Commerce? I have no 
use for Commerce as that word is understood to-day. 
Why, I am told (with what degree of accuracy I 
don’t know) that there are actually people—I use 
as charitable a term as I can—people who specialize 
in the hideous practice of this thing called Publicity, 
who set themselves to induce respectable old com¬ 
mercial houses to allow them to frame their appeals 
to the public. I don’t know from what class these 
lowly individuals actually spring, and I confess that 
I prefer to remain ignorant. But I invite you to 
contemplate a condition of things when men can set 
out deliberately to increase the blatancy and vul¬ 
garity of an already sufficiently blatant and vulgar 
civilization. 

“I have even heard, ladies and gentlemen—though 
here I remain sceptical, if only in the interests of my 
own satisfaction in my kind—that these publicity 
dealers have actually succeeded in establishing rela¬ 
tions with persons of our profession. I am glad to 
see that some of you shudder. It is a thing to shud- 



74 


THE HOARDING 


der at. That there are writers who present and even 
promote the paragraph and the puff” . . . etc. . . . 
and much more of the same kind. 

When he had thanked them for their indulgent 
reception of his advocacy of what he feared was an 
old-fashioned prejudice, he followed his chair-lady, 
as he had taken occasion “humorously” to call her, 
into the throng and there permitted himself to he 
surrounded. 

“I do thank you, Mr. Coleton; you said exactly 
what ought to he said,” murmured a large hlonde 
woman, who to speak to him had to desert her little 
court of young smiling men, “exactly what ought to 
be said, in the ears even of”—the voice was now 
carefully modulated—‘ ‘ of some people who are here 
to-night.” 

Coleton looked into her eyes with a profound air 
of comprehension and—slid away into the throng. 
Another and another spoke to him, hut his movement 
was definitely towards the door. And yet conceiv¬ 
ably—as indeed one or two observant minds decided 
—the purpose was not escape. Near to the door 
stood (waited?) among others the pair to whom he 
came at last as if with some purpose. 

“How are you, Mrs. Graeme? ...” It was like 
putting a match to dry gorse. Waiting? Of course 
she had been waiting. He held her hand in the man¬ 
ner doubtless approved by himself—that little, soft, 
thrilling hand; and then he turned to Lesley Senior, 
who was in the mid-career of her congratulations. 

“Your help,” he said softly—he could emotional- 


THE HOARDING 


75 


ize such a minor occasion as the present—“and you 
were all helping me who shared my feelings; merely 
by sitting there and thinking with me; your help was 
—wonderful.” He could use these little pitched-up 
softnesses matchlessly. The eyes of the young 
woman responded—glowed; his words came again. 
But a quiet observer behind them there in the crowd 
may have discovered, in the eyes of the other woman, 
a lifting intolerance of the ingenuously worded com¬ 
pliment. Experience, contemptuous in its own se¬ 
curity—or almost security. 

His air was one of a special tenderness to the 
ingenue, indicative of his real mind being elsewhere, 
though not far away. So read one of that pair of 
hearers. 

“I think my campaign is making headway—if 
campaign is not too little modest a word. 

“I am sure of it, Mr. Coleton. You will yet put 
out the sky signs of these dreadful people. Perhaps 
some day you’ll even succeed in making all advertis¬ 
ing a crime against the State, as at present it is a 
blot upon art and beauty.” 

“But surely,” suggested a pinched voice from be¬ 
hind, the pinched voice coming forth from the 
shrivelled lips of a little sallow woman in unbecom¬ 
ing pink, “but surely, Mr. Coleton, you allow your 
publisher to advertise your books?” 

He rubbed his hands and smiled. “Ah, my dear 
Miss Tinkler, I’m afraid I’ve no choice. The good 
man reserves to himself the right to do whatever he 
chooses in order to sell his wares. And as I cannot 


76 


THE HOARDING 


live on air—even the air that blows across the 
Thames to-night—I have to go on allowing my work 
to be his wares. But I would certainly rejoice to see 
a day when the mere bald announcement of a book, 
with no qualification of carefully selected praise, 
would be the sole form in which any self-respecting 
writer should advance his claim to public attention. ’ ’ 
“I quite agree,” burst in Lesley impetuously. “I 
think all advertising—I don’t care of what—tea, 
coffee, books, or pictures—is horrible. And I’m very 
glad that my views have a champion. ’ ’ 

“ Ah, but the champion would in any case be forth¬ 
coming, once your views were expressed!” 

She looked at him with bright eyes and a little 
flush; she was probably extraordinarily flattered, for 
remember what Coleton was—a name which counted 
so powerfully. (Have you ever seen the queue at 
Mudie’s the morning after his new book comes out!) 
Here was a man with friends all over the town, 
whose afternoon could be a progress from drawing¬ 
room to drawing-room; and this man had leisure to 
concentrate upon her , a will to individualize her . 
She answered him gaily, unaware, in her young ex¬ 
citement, ot the eyes—mocking, contemptuous—of 
another woman who was secure in a hidden, precious 
reality of her own. 

“Then, if you offer to be my Galahad, Mr. Coleton, 
I’ll bind on your arm a sign for an injunction to go 
on and utterly destroy this dragon of advertising.” 

“If you really will help me to put these people to 
flight,” continued Coleton, “I shall feel that you 


THE HOARDING 


77 


have proved yourself an ally as well as an inspira¬ 
tion/’ 

Lesley’s eyes, still bright, smiled at him again. 
But at this point Netta Graeme made her move to¬ 
wards the cloak-room. 

“I’ll get you a taxi,” he murmured. The room 
heard. Mrs. Graeme smiled round upon them as she 
retreated. The distinguished Claude Coleton was to 
go into the night and whistle for her taxi. . . . And 
presently they were darting into the wet, shining 
street towards a thump-thumping car, and he was 
opening the door. He must hold their hands—Les¬ 
ley’s first; then, in the darkness at the door, Mrs. 
Graeme’s. 

As the car grunted and then ran suddenly, 
smoothly up the street, Netta leant back with a little 
sigh of content, her eyes bright. 

But if anyone had cared to look in when next the 
car came under the light of an arc-lamp he would 
perhaps have said that the eyes of both women were 
bright. 

II 

Lesley leant back in her corner and drew a long 
breath. 

“He was very-” 

“Devoted?” 

“Of course I didn’t intend that,” Lesley flashed 
out. “You know what I meant. I was speaking of 
the address.” 


“And thinking of- 




78 


THE HOARDING 


“Don’t be absurd, Netta. The man’s delivery was 
very good. I select that word carefully from my 
incomparable range of adjectives. His speech—I 
mean his way of putting it forth—suggested glitter 
and-” 

“All that glitters is not gold,” murmured Netta 
Graeme. 

“I believe for some extraordinary reason you dis¬ 
like him.” 

“You believe that, do you?” 

Mrs. Graeme had her head set well back and her 
voice came evenly in answer. Oddly enough she 
stroked her own small right hand with her left, as 
though one served the other—did obeisance because 
some obscurely won but indubitable honour had 
come its way. 

“Yes,” the girl persisted. “You said you’d come 
to-night to please me, but that if you were consulting 
your own feelings you would have kept away.” 

“And from that you deduce dislike?” 

“What else? If you didn’t dislike him you’d have 
been perfectly willing to go.” 

“Well, .and suppose I do not like to see a 
man being spoon-fed with adulation—the sugar-and- 
creamy adulation they mix specially at the Woman’s 
Reform for the men they get there-” 

“There wasn’t much of it. You can’t get a really 
big man and not pay him a few silly little compli¬ 
ments, I suppose.” 

“Apparently not.” 

“And yet how unimportant all these little speeches 




THE HOARDING 


79 


seemed when he spoke, when he really got going. 
Of course we expect a great deal now, and I really 
believe I could never read him again if, anywhere, 
I came across an interview with him.” 

“I, my dear, shall continue not to be influenced in 
the smallest degree in my reading by anything I 
heard, whether to-night or at any other time. As 
a matter of fact, I am not at all sure that I agree 
with Claude Coleton. Why should one not be adver¬ 
tised and use advertisements? If I hadn’t just 
enough to save me from having to put up a sign in 
Bond Street, and I had to turn to earn a living, I’d 
be advertising. Of course I would. And you may 
be doing it before long.” 

“Never!” 

“But an artist just as much as a writer has got 
to do it! Sooner or later. I’m not sure indeed if 
I had to make a living I wouldn’t do it by making up 
advertisements myself! And you should illustrate 
them. ’ ’ 

“What a perfectly hideous idea.” The girl 
laughed, but there was a remote echo of some essen¬ 
tial distaste—a kind of young shrinking of the artist 
in her from something crude. 

In her own room in the flat which for two years 
she had shared with Netta Graeme, she found her¬ 
self glowing with impressions of that evening—of 
that man’s air as he had stood there giving them an 
ideal—for that, in these harsh days, was what the 
tender thing could be called; of his eye upon her 
corner; how often it had found its way there—she 


80 


THE HOARDING 


tried to count . . . and then his coming to her . . . 
speaking to her, individualizing her. Finally, that 
courtly special tenderness of the safe conduct to the 
cab! 

Men? She’d never had time to sort out her im¬ 
pressions of men. Even now in relation to this man 
she could not discover herself. She was excited, 
flattered certainly . . . there was that word one used 
—hook-writers used it: intrigued. 

But she was still young enough—and some odd, 
detached self in her recognized while itself hasten¬ 
ing on towards a position of old age, or at least some 
ground from which it could look back and patronize 
—she was still young enough to be moved by the 
exposition of an ideal, and there was that ideal pre¬ 
served by this distinguished man—this man whom 
the world agreed to admire. He must know what 
might be his by holding out a hand; and he forbore 
to hold it. 

It was the gesture of aloofness, of freedom from 
the common appetite for fame which had first caught 
her; and then the direction of all that he signified— 
reputation, grace of utterance, ease of manner, and 
a subtle personal distinction—the direction of all 
that, as it had seemed, towards herself. She felt 
even now a little overwhelmed. She wondered if and 
when she would see him again. 

She began, as a woman must do, to consider him 
now a little more in detail; and she was, as she told 
herself, still satisfied. H £ met all her demands unless 
there was . . . what was it ? She could only hesitate 


THE HOARDING 


81 


at this point, hesitate on the brink of a decision . . . 
“a certain softness.** She withheld the idea strenu¬ 
ously. He had presented her with an ideal. That 
mean little criticism should not invade. . . . More 
strenuously she withheld it. Softness of gesture 
. . . softness of- 

How subtly the idea, the general atmosphere of 
suggestion of that thing seemed to come about her. 
She beat wildly with some spiritual flail to dissipate 
the clinging, amorphous thing. . . . Softness—or an 
absence of hardness in the quality of the thinking 
. . . an over-intellectualized character of speech 
... a something which responded to the softness 
about him. Wilful adaptation to surrounding cir¬ 
cumstances? Conceivably. And with that explana¬ 
tion eagerly accepted and thrust into service at once, 
she found herself reacting to her doubt, reconquer¬ 
ing for him the ground within herself; and in doing 
so she was astonished to discover how much easier 
reconquest was than she could have expected. The 
ground was already half yielded . . . for, you see, 
the gentleman really had made an impression. . . . 
That doubt ran away at once—ran, you might say, 
for its life. 

It might—who knew?—some day be heard of 
again. 

In the meantime there abode this idea that the 
distinguished Claude Coleton had paid her attention, 
and that this first emotional thrill might be the first 
of many. For, obviously, it was towards herself 
that he had set his being that night. 



82 


THE HOARDING 


And in the next room to hers lay, thinking, another 
woman—thinking that same thought of that same 
man in terms, though, of a relation to herself. Once 
she thought, with a smiling amusement that was free 
from malice, though it had in it something of pity, 
of Lesley. . . . For poor little Lesley, with her in¬ 
experience, believed ... it was clear from her eyes 
as he had approached that she believed . . . and yet 
the truth had been so transparent. 

In the darkness she drew the soft small right hand 
from under the bedclothes so that she might lift it 
to her lips again. 


CHAPTER VI 


I 

In the life history of every man there are Bates . 
Well here is a date in the life of this man—this 
Boxrider. 

There had been a kind of understanding—a sort 
of concession to the susceptibilities of the senior 
partner—that such connexions as Beech brought into 
the service of the union remained in his own hands. 
Probably if Boxrider had been examined on the 
point he would have told you that he had not minded, 
that it was a temporary arrangement only, and that 
he merely meant to wait for a proper occasion before 
taking in hand the development of the Kingford, the 
“Tranquillity” underwear, and the other connexions 
which Beech had inherited from his father. As to 
Beech, Boxrider was always seeking for a clue. 

One day he had said, looking up at a portrait over 
the fire-grate, “You know, Beech, I admire your old 
man. He must have been the real thing.” 

“Very good of you,” says Beech primly, in his 
best minor-public school manner. 

Boxrider looked at him curiously. “It isn’t good 
of me; it’s a natural remark. He knew his job! 
Inside out he knew it. It’s a pity you couldn’t hang 
on to what he left you in the way of connexions.” 

83 


84 


THE HOARDING 


“If I had done”—Beech looked up with quick 
fury—“if I had done, I’d have no occasion for a 
partner to sit in my room and put me right all day.” 

Beech spent half his time now demanding of him¬ 
self to know by what kind of possession he had been 
caught when he let Boxrider into his office. He had 
begun to notice things: I mean minor things. I will 
come later to a major matter. 

But such minor points as these: people came to 
the office with commissions—small commissions 
many of them—but business was flowing in. He was 
glad to see that; of course, he told himself, he was 
delighted—he was not quite a fool. But in that last 
declaration he may conceivably have been wrong. 
He wanted business for the sake of the income it 
provided. But he hated the means by which the 
end was attained. The practice of his “profession” 
—as in moments of self-despite, he still loved to call 
it—was not less vulgar since he had had Boxrider 
to help him. But he was not sickened only by the 
business: he had begun to turn away from the 
thought that the business grew because Boxrider 
conducted it. . . . And then there was the staff. 
Boxrider had done something there. Their manner 
had changed completely. Even when they showed 
an unwonted deference he was always being involved 
in an emotional dilemma—whether to repudiate the 
new conditions in view of the circumstances in which 
they had arisen, or simply to accept and enjoy them. 

The reason for the change? The reason for all the 
changes was the same— Boxrider . 



THE HOARDING 


85 



All the same, Boxrider, in his own mental state¬ 
ment of the case, did not mean to leave Beech to 
muddle away the Kingford connexion. More than 
for any other reason he had joined with Beech to 
get that business; he was going to get it. But he 
was waiting. He wanted something really of the 
first quality. Kingfords knew, of course, he had 
joined the firm, but he had no hope at all that that 
fact would have impressed them favourably. “Any¬ 
body Beech would take on would be sure to be— 
another Beech.’’ 

He meant to come in on Kingfords suddenly. But 
it was Boxrider’s principle that you did not “walk 
in on a man with a proposition”—he was, we have 
to own it, given to this transatlantic argot—“unless 
you’d got the whole thing worked out: unless you’d 
something to offer which he could see—something 
you could hold right under his nose.” 

Well, as he would tell you now, the best way to 
study Publicity is to keep in the streets. “After 
all,” he would say often, when, considerably more 
established than at this stage, he allowed himself the 
indulgence of appropriate attitudes, “what is Pub¬ 
licity? Getting the Public. And where’s the Pub¬ 
lic?”—he would throw an arm towards a thorough¬ 
fare—“where, if not there?” 

He went out, that noticeably energetic figure of 
his moving easily, the head, as ever, pushed a little 




86 


THE HOARDING 


forward—a gesture that was a symbol. The mind 
must be in front of the body, for the thought must 
work ahead of this physical London. 

He crossed New Bridge Street and entered Fleet 
Street. His reflections were not cheerful to-day. 
There were people who would tell him he had done 
well. But he would not agree. He had worked two 
“stunts.” But the cash rewards had only been 
moderate. Not that that worried him; what was 
wrong was this, that of those two businesses neither 
was likely to do much for him in the future. Their 
custom had not the quality of continuity. Six months 
hence Barberry, of “Links with Learning/’ might 
send for him again and pay him twenty pounds to 
design another page; or the Chair people might hand 
him a little ten-pound job. 

But what more could he expect? Now, if they had 
been a cocoa, or a pill, or an underwear. . . . 

Fleet Street. . . . He had no use for Fleet Street 
. . . and yet he was not sure; and that reminded 
him: he must get Kelly to put him up for the 
“Proposition Club.” Clubs could be made useful 
and the “Proposition” included everybody who 
dealt in the thing whose name this club bore. And 
pushing up beyond the head of Fleet Street it was 
now at length that he came to the Hoarding. There 
it rose, a symol, if you liked, of progress, certainly 
of commercial energy, upon the ruins of a coarse, 
stupid civilization—the civilization of a so-called 
Bohemia beloved of moderately successful elderly 
men with thirsts and long memories—the civilization 


THE HOARDING 


87 


of the fallen Holywell Street. A significant thing 
that hoarding—that giant symbol of an impatience 
with an undistinguished past. 

He looked up with little notion, perhaps, of the 
relevance of the very thing to his own concerns. 
Symbol. Yes, but as yet symbol of no more than a 
commercial intelligence. It still hid its intent to 
take a part in affairs of the spirit. Certainly he had 
no suspicion. For looking up, his thoughts were of 
the things he saw—the advertisements hanging 
there. 

What a rotten bill that was of “Tip-Top Tea”—■ 
would not pull a single buyer: involved; and feeble. 
A breakfast table group of the conventional type— 
father, mother, son, daughter (there is apparently 
a Malthus presiding over the inspirations of adver¬ 
tisement designs, who keeps a jealous eye on the 
limitation of families). The ill-drawn and vacuous 
young man (the mere cut of whose clothes suggested 
that he could not afford to buy good tea seeing that 
he was forced to go to a slop-shop for his dress)— 
this young man appeared to be observing that 
“ ‘Tip-Top Tea 7 keeps out colds. 7 ’ But there was 
no certainty that it was he who was saying it; and 
yet if he was not saying it, how did the picture illus¬ 
trate the legend? And even if he was saying it, what 
was there in the picture to prove his statement? 

And then there was “Tranquillity” underwear. 
(They had been clients of old Beech and still gave 
the firm a little provincial work.) “It warms the 
cockles of your heart.” Was it possible to use the 


88 


THE HOARDING 


English language at all and be more inane? Where 
was the point? But he could guess the circumstances 
of the birth of the silly legend. 

One of those clever young men who wrote adver¬ 
tisements in his spare time, who had perhaps won 
a prize for “the best suggestion” advertising 
“Tranquillity” underwear, would have written it 
out and sent it in, and a dull, middle-aged man in 
charge of the hoarding advertisement side would be 
vaguely reminded of some phrase of his remote and 
cherished youth. He would not ask himself what 
was the good of something which warmed the cockles 
of your heart (whatever the cockles might be) if it 
did not keep your back warm. But the motto was 
merely silly—inconceivably silly; what was worse 
was the claim added that “ ‘ Tranquillity ’ underwear 
never wears out.” That was a lie; and an obvious 
lie—as this was—always irritated the public who 
was supposed to be attracted. 

Boxrider was no stern moralist; he would have 
told you flatly he was not. But he subscribed cheer¬ 
fully to an edited counsel of his forefathers and held 
that honesty, if not an anxious honesty, was the best 
policy. Boxrider’s almost glaring honesty of pur¬ 
pose i& a thing to note by the way, and to remember. 
He did not like the word “policy.” I suppose he 
would have been honest if it had been politic to be 
dishonest. Only he never was able to envisage cir¬ 
cumstances where dishonesty could be business. He 
had taken stock of other men. There was Lether- 
head, for instance, who was running a certain 



THE HOARDING 


89 


“ Quick Fact-Finding Encyclopaedia. ’’ Well, an en¬ 
cyclopaedia once unloaded on the public left you all 
right—there was no more to be said. You might 
tell your public that the work answered every ques¬ 
tion and provided the latest knowledge, and you 
could suppress the inconvenient addenda that the 
maps were all out of date and that the history took 
no account of the last war. You would not be having 
another encyclopaedia to offer. “Only,” said Box- 
rider, “even that’s bad business. Suppose you’ve 
sold every copy before you’re found out, it’s bad 
business. If you satisfy your public, if you give them 
confidence, you’re allaying suspicion, and if you 
allay suspicion you ’re helping to put money into cir¬ 
culation. Now, Letherhead, you’ve sold your rotten 
encyclopaedia, we’ll say—though it’s assumption 
merely, and, I for one, will take leave to doubt that 
you will sell the thing: you’ll be found out before 
that—still we’ll say you’ve sold it. You’ve got so 
much money for it and you want to make a financial 
move. You buy a paper mill or a printing works, 
say, and put it on the market. And the public fights 
shy. I don’t mean because they know you’re con¬ 
nected with it. The thing goes deeper than that. 
They merely feel involved in an atmosphere of sus¬ 
picion. They have no confidence in anything. And 
you’re the maker of that suspicion. ... No, my son, 
clean business is always good business.” 

When it came to the case of a food or an undergar¬ 
ment the argument was more emphatic. The people 
who bought it from you to-day would have consumed 


90 


THE HOARDING 


the food by next week, and worn out the undergar¬ 
ment by next year; and well, then, they would want 
fresh supplies. Were they to come back to you! 

Tell the truth. But, as a postscript his mind 
added, looking at that inanity on the hoarding, tell 
it clearly and attractively. 

And now, finally, on that hoarding there was 
Kingford’s Cocoa, with its inconceivably fatuous 
legend, “Kingford’s Cocoa—Have you Tried It?” 

No, of course I have not—why should I? was the 
natural comment after reading that unarresting in¬ 
quiry. The kind of thing Beech had been turning 
out for them, though he sometimes put forth efforts 
that were worse—out-of-date phrases current in the 
days of his father, who had presumably attached 
them to the specific: ‘ 4 The man who broke the bank 
did it merely to buy Kingford’s, which you can get 
for one shilling and threepence”; or “It was the 
absent-minded beggar who went without his King- 
ford’s.” . . . What appeal had those dead words to 
the public to-day? Young Boxrider, I believe, often 
spent a good many hours reading and subjecting to 
a critical eye these appeals to public attention. De¬ 
taching himself now from the allurement of the 
hoarding he set off westward. But, moving on, he 
found himself going back in thought to the Strand 
and to that great board with its attempt to catch a 
passing and more or less indifferent public. 

The fact that, from the hoarding, he turned and 
walked west is really immensely important. 


THE HOARDING 


91 


Here, then, we have Boxrider on his way west on 
this day of significance to himself, and therefore, 
necessarily, to others. He took the direction from 
no conscious design. He walked, as he usually did, 
with an eager eye that dived into faces—women’s 
faces mostly, because women were still a challenging 
mystery. 

He crossed the Strand and Charing Cross and 
loitered through the plateau of Trafalgar Square. 
Suddenly he stopped, his breath coming and going, 
his eyes shining as at a vision. And his eye was on 
Nelson high up there. . . . Yes, there was no doubt. 
. . . Perhaps Boxrider translated everything in 
terms of his job. But that column now: there was 
an advertisement: an advertisement, if ever there 
was one, of England’s greatness and achievement 
at sea. And—yes—business still carried on at Ad¬ 
miralty Buildings opposite. 

In the Haymarket he stopped to look into Tur¬ 
nery’s window. There, again, was something to he 
proud of: a raincoat that had ceased to he a patent 
article and become a word in the language. If it 
was wet you put on your Turnery. Turnery is a 
garment to keep out the rain. No longer is it the 
name of the maker of a garment to keep out the 
rain. Again that odd half-choking thrill. There was 
something that had been made: that idea—that 
created thing, the genius of Publicity—occupied 
him; he could have called out. 


92 


THE HOARDING 


Art—what is Art? Who reserved the thrill and 
passion of Art for men with colours and men with 
pens? 

But now comes a moment of real drama. At Swan 
& Edgar’s he hesitated. He might have lounged off 
into Regent Street. That colonnade caught his eye, 
as it catches the eye of men and women every minute 
of the day, touching them by its sweep and dignity 
and odd promise of something. 

If he had gone that way—I do not know—there 
would certainly be a story to tell; because the life 
of each one of us is compounded of so much mystery 
and grandeur that inevitably thereby hangs a tale. 
There would be a story; but not this story. 

But into Piccadilly he turned, all ignorant that he 
was stepping into the lives of others, and carrying 
himself into the presence of realities of which his 
heart still suspected nothing. 

He was still in Piccadilly, and just before him now 
rose the high and sombre square of Burlington 
House. He caught at once an impression of well- 
dressed crowds, and there before him was explana¬ 
tion enough. “Royal Academy—Spring Exhibi¬ 
tion,” he read. 

For a whole minute he hesitated. Then, perhaps 
dimly aware of some mysterious beckoning of Fate, 
perhaps moved merely by one of those obscure im¬ 
pulses to a gaiety that shall contrast with the heavi¬ 
ness of one’s thought, as though one were suddenly 
presented with a psychic galvanometer wherewith 
to excite oneself to a quicker spiritual movement, 


THE HOARDING 


93 


that man went in, paid his shilling, bought his Fate 
if you like, and a moment later was in the middle 
of an idling, slow-moving, quick-talking crowd of 
women in soft silks, men in town clothes. This was 
an early crowd; there were people here whom one 
ought to know; the show had not yet been abandoned 
by Society. So that Hornsey in georgette blouse 
and tweed skirt, and Leytonstone in pink and glori¬ 
ous head-covering mingled with the soft tones of 
Berkeley Square and the smart little toques of 
Sloane Street. 

He liked seeing these crowds. There were the 
people whom, ultimately, he had got to understand. 
These were the folk it was his business to convince. 
He did not go to them directly; but almost directly 
he did. He did not stop the Duchess of Pastures 
and say, “ Madam, what you want, what you’ve al¬ 
ways wanted for that admirable family of yours, is 
‘Kingford’s Cocoa.’ ” But he did stop her when 
she next opened her “Sport and Society’’ with just 
that reminder. And these people from the suburbs 
—he did not trot them off each one in turn to the 
refreshment room and stand them a “Tip-Top Tea,” 
in the meantime exhorting them to empty through 
their windows all other kinds and drink only ‘‘ Tip- 
Top” for the future. But next time they passed the 
hoarding which filled up the empty space at their 
street corner—if he got his way—he would be there 
with a big picture of 4 ‘ Tip-Top ’ ’; and if he had the 
matter in hand, the picture would be something bet¬ 
ter than that unspeakably fatuous family group with 


94 


THE HOARDING 


its imbecile legend about the tea “that keeps out 
cold.” 

His mind reverted to “Kingford’s Cocoa.” 
These were the people who ought all to be swallow¬ 
ing “Kingford’s Cocoa.” All these women who 
were married (and you could easily guess which of 
them were) ought to be buying Kingford’s for their 
miserable kind. Ought to! Should! Must! 

I believe that that sudden determination came 
upon him precisely in the doorway of Room XI, into 
which, if you remember, you barge, if you are not 
careful, immediately after doing Room I, to the det¬ 
riment of the good order of a mind intent on the offi¬ 
cial catalogue. There is something to be considered 
in the fact that this resolve should be excited so 
powerfully and with such swiftness as he stood in 
the doorway; for his mind immediately demanded 
“How”—How to make these women think about 
Kingfords—buy Kingfords. And having made that 
demand he found answer opposite. 

He knew at once. He always knew. It was part 
of that genius of his to know. There it was—that 
picture of the very young woman radiant with 
spring; that portrait, if it was a portrait. The girl 
was seen, diaphanously draped, in a green meadow 
on which her pale feet glinted. Her head was raised 
and half turned, as if in contemplation. You were, 
you felt, supposed to understand from the shy, hope¬ 
ful, ingenuous curiosity of the eyes that there was 
a lover somewhere in behind those sombre shadowed 
trees in the remote distance. 


THE HOARDING 


95 


It was an astonishingly vivid piece of work, a 
canvas in which the figure really lived. It made the 
faces on either side look dull, unreal. But it was 
those half-opened red lips that caught his mind, 
made his breath come so quickly. 

He looked down at the title. 

“Waiting!” 

An elderly woman in rich black started a little 
and blinked like a sheep in pasture disturbed by a 
golf ball as she heard the crack of fist on hand. That 
strange-looking young man! Why did these people 
come? She hoped he was not mad; did not mean to 
commit suicide presently. She did so hate the sight 
of blood. 

But our friend Boxrider did not know that such a 
woman had ever been sent into this world and en¬ 
trusted with the responsibility of cherishing an im¬ 
mortal soul. He had one thought—a thought to dis¬ 
turb us rather seriously. But his thoughts are to 
disturb us a good deal. 

“Waiting ”—for her cup of Kingford’s. (An out¬ 
rage? The mere projection of the thought an of¬ 
fence? In terms of these prejudices of ours—Yes. 
In terms of his—No.) 

He turned to the catalogue again, this time for the 
name of the artist: “By Lesley Senior.” 

Lesley! Lesley was a girl’s name. He remem¬ 
bered in one of those books he had borrowed from 
his old schoolmaster there had been a poem to a 
“Bonnie Lesley.” Well, it was rather a bore. He 
thought he could be interested in women, in their 


90 


THE HOARDING 


proper place. But here? Besides you never knew 
with women. 

But there, without the least particle of a doubt, 
was the picture that had been conceived, painted, 
and exhibited to one end. He had done with the rest 
of the show. He went at once in search of the de¬ 
partment which dealt with proposals for purchase. 
He saw a blond, pale-haired, junior clerk, and this 
young man, rather astonished by the appearance of 
his visitor, who did not look like one of the picture¬ 
buying sort, raised his eyebrows. 

‘‘Were you inquiring for yourself, sir?” 

"“Certainly,” answered his visitor rather trucu¬ 
lently, as the secretary thought. ‘ c I want the figure. 
I can sell that picture if the price is kept low. ’ ’ 

“Then you are acting for another?” 

“If I pay you it doesn’t matter who I buy it for, 
does it?” 

“Certainly not,” said the young man with a 
blandness which mingled with it a mild irony, “if 
you pay. Certainly not. The price of the picture 
is”—he turned up a book—“is seventy pounds.” 

“Is it? I’ll give you fifty.” 

“Oh, we don’t discuss prices here, sir! The price 
is fixed by the artist.” 

“Oh, very well!” says our urgent friend, “I’ll see 
the artist.” 

There was no doubt about it. That was what he 
would have to do. He had hoped to bargain with 
this Johnny at the desk. Boxrider had argued that 
the “Johnny” would be indifferent to the precise 


THE HOARDING 


97 


price paid; the commission would not be very much, 
and rather than lose a customer for an obscure artist 
he would cave in. But now he would have to find the 
confounded woman, who it appeared lived in Chelsea 
—Riverside Flats. For a moment he was inclined 
to write: he knew very little about artists and he had 
a practical man’s distrust of, and impatience with, 
what he conceived the type. But then he would get 
a silly feminine letter—the sort which people of that 
kind would write—“I’m afraid I can’t alter my 
price. ’ ’ Yes, it would have to be a personal meeting. 

He might as well get it over. He went out into 
Piccadilly, climbed on to the top of a bus, and while 
he was being conveyed southwards his quick eye was 
hard worked finding stations for that great new con¬ 
ception of his. Here was Piccadilly Circus. To 
anyone coming out of Piccadilly that picture 
“Waiting” must be there over on the edge of 
Shaftesbury Avenue somewhere; one could buy up 
a Shaftesbury Avenue stand fronting the Circus. 
And coming to Trafalgar Square and Nelson again; 
when he had really got working and had money flow¬ 
ing in he would be willing, he told himself half jest¬ 
ingly, to sink every penny to buy that column: 
Business—that would be business; that would hit 
the whole world in the eye. 

And now, descending his bus at Westminster and 
waiting for a Chelsea-going one, he considered Big 
Ben. There were whimsical possibilities there. 
You could put up a disappearing sky-sign in place 
of, or immediately under or over, the clock face. 



98 


THE HOARDING 


‘‘Isn’t it time yon had yonr cup of Kingford?” or 
“Eleven o’clock and now for ‘Tranquillity.’ ” He 
laughed. His joke really caught him and amused 
him. 

But he would make Beech and Boxrider! He 
brought a fist down hard, and an elderly gentleman 
with an air of permament and ineffectual protest 
against life jumped in his seat, hoping that this was 
not one of those labour leaders, who existed only to 
rob elderly gentlemen of the means by which they 
were able to preserve contact with other elderly 
gentlemen. 

In Chelsea, Boxrider came off his bus and looked 
about him. With such a name Riverside Flats ought 
not to be hard to find. He walked out of King’s 
Road and towards the embankment, and at a corner 
on the river-side discovered the building he sought 
in a gaunt new red-brick-faced erection. He sighed. 
Probably, being a woman, she would live in a house 
where there would not be a lift; and being an artist 
she would have the flat at the top of the building. 
Also it would take ten minutes to discover if she 
lived in the place at all. 

And now he got the first of three small shocks: 
for he found her name not on a high painted board 
but on the first door on which his eye alighted. He 
was sufficiently taken aback to stand hesitating like 
a man pulled up when in flight. Then he knocked. 
For a moment he could hear nothing, and he won¬ 
dered if the place was empty. Then there came the 
sound of someone moving slowly within; he thought 


THE HOARDING 


99 


afterwards that the impression he had had was of 
hearing the step of one who took easy, long strides, 
someone in a special sense, of leisure—who, even if' 
working a sixteen-hour day, was still at leisure. 

But that was a post-, not a pre-the-event impres¬ 
sion, doubtless. It is so easy to restore a past in 
terms of a present; to believe we are only re-creat¬ 
ing, when actually we are creating; to say we 
thought, when we should acknowledge that we think 
we thought! 

. . . Unless of course . . . unless there are ex¬ 
periences too tremendous in their consequences to 
allow a mere trammel such as Time to check their 
force, and whose impetus is from the beginning so 
great as to override our earthly unities. A thing 
may be so big as to affect us profoundly though we 
may be unaware of the fact from the very begin¬ 
ning. . . . 

Well, there is the choice of opinions. Afterwards, 
he had an idea of premonitions. But at that mo¬ 
ment he was standing there before that door wait¬ 
ing, listening to a leisured movement along the pas¬ 
sage within; and a moment later, observing, with 
the sudden energy of curiosity and dissatisfaction, 
the tall young woman with the grey eyes and an air 
of slow, perhaps assumed, astonishment, who stood 
in the doorway. 


CHAPTER VII 


I 

So there you have that pair: perhaps the oddest 
conjunction of the sexes to be found at that moment 
in London. 

“I wanted a Miss Senior.” 

“I am a Miss Senior.” She seemed to think bet¬ 
ter of the jest, for she corrected herself, “I am Miss 
Senior.” 

He had not missed the withdrawal of the indefinite 
article, but he was not sorry for that: he had no ex¬ 
perience of women of this kind, but some odd, re¬ 
mote voice within him was saying that he did not 
want any tricks. He had a suspicion, too, that she 
was so far in sole possession of the situation. He 
must get a foot in, literally. 

i ‘May I have a few words with you then, please?” 
He was annoyed that she still hesitated. He wanted 
to see her stand aside and welcome him in. “It’s 
about a picture. ’ ’ 

She stood aside at once now. ‘‘Come in, please.” 
(Why couldn’t she have said that before?) 

He found himself in a narrow, white-enameled 
passage dividing two small rooms from two others. 
There were pictures hanging on the wall—one only 

100 


THE HOARDING 


101 


of four was in a frame. The picture in a frame was 
of a youngish man with what might be called a 
“modern” smile, and a face vaguely familiar. Had 
he seen it somewhere? 

It was a picture which profoundly irritated the 
young man who now observed it. To Boxrider the 
whole experience was becoming a mere series of 
irritations; the flat, the circumstances in which he 
visited it, this portrait, all irritated; the woman her¬ 
self irritated by what he characterized mentally as 
her insolent indifference—an indifference which re¬ 
fused to take account of him as a man, even as a 
human being, and that scarcely seemed to admit his 
reality as a means of exchanging money for her 
pictures. 

In the meantime Lesley Senior was opening the 
door of a small sitting-room; and again he was not 
pleased. It was not his idea of comfort; it would 
not be any man’s: an oak wall, a Welsh dresser, an 
oak floor with only a couple of small Persian rugs , 4 
a couple of deep arm-chairs, and on the wall a glow¬ 
ing sunset in oils—a fantastic crudity for which he 
had no use. Coldness; discomfort. He had a notion 
that these artists had rooms of a mysterious char¬ 
acter called ‘ ‘ Studios. ’’ He wanted to be shown into 
hers. He did not know that Lesley’s “studio” was 
the exiguous chamber which was all that Netta, who 
had apportioned the rooms, could allot to art; nor 
that to this little, undistinguished work-room visitors 
—even the most intimately known—were never 
brought. 



102 


THE HOARDING 


In the meantime Lesley was addressing her caller. 

“Won’t you sit down, Mr.-?” 

“Boxrider,” he hurried to explain —unnecessarily 
hurried, he afterwards told himself. 

He sat down and looked at the long, slim brown 
fingers. “Twisted you round her little finger”: odd 
that that idea should come into his mind! 

“And now?” She smiled saying that, and her 
face had a power of slow enchantment when she 
smiled. 

“I came about that picture of yours in the 
Academy. ’ ’ 

“Oh, yes?” She ought to have started, flushed 
with pleasure. Wasn’t he the patron? 

“I want to buy it.” Now he had proclaimed him¬ 
self! 

“It’s very good of you.” 

“But I came to make an offer. I told the chap 
at the office and he referred me to you. I offer”— 
he was recovering quickly now, and she must have 
seen a change for she sat up, suddenly regarding 
him with a somewhat quickened curiosity. “I offer 
a firm fifty pounds.” 

“I asked for seventy.” She spoke calmly in that 
strange, soft, low voice, giving an impression of ease 
(perhaps too great an ease for his approval). 

“Yes, I know you did. But I offer fifty.” 

“I think it’s worth seventy.” 

“I dare say you do. You’re the seller. It’s your 
business to maintain your price if you can, only you 
can’t. There’s a slump in pictures. Many people— 



THE HOARDING 


103 


even famous artists-” He stopped. That way 

of putting it was, he felt suddenly, inconceivably 
clumsy. 

Of course she took her opportunity. “And I, not 
being a famous artist, ought to be glad to get fifty.” 

“Well, that’s about it.” He snapped out the 
words, and she looked at him. She was beginning 
to forget the awkward manner and was finding her¬ 
self aware of a sudden young crude power in this 
man. And she seems to have had this curious im¬ 
pulse, inexplicable to herself—an impulse rising 
from she knew not what infinitely remote centre of 
her being—an impulse to keep him like that—to keep 
him trading, arguing, chaffering. She had not ex¬ 
pected to find a man; and here was a man, a dis¬ 
agreeably outlined man, but a man. It was not al¬ 
ways given to a woman to find a clue so quickly. But 
she found it already infinitely precious, and as her 
active dislike grew, as it appears to have done, her 
desire to “make the creature” (her own mental 
phrase) talk characteristically, found her persisting 
in the character of merchant. 

“Suppose I don’t choose to sell for less than my 
price 1 ’ ’ 

“I don’t think you’ll do that. You can’t keep up 
prices on a collapsing market.” 

“Oh, but you don’t know what I can do, Mr. Box- 
rider! I don’t suppose you know very much about 
how hard an artist has to work before he has his 
picture ready. He’s got to buy all his colours and 
canvasses, pay for the hire and heating of a studio, 



104 


THE HOARDING 


find himself in food and clothes while he’s working, 
pay models if he uses them, and if he’s doing land¬ 
scapes pay railway fares to reach the places he 
wants to paint, and lodging charges after he gets 
there. And when he’s worked for perhaps half a 
year, spending everything and risking everything; 
perhaps when he sends the picture up to the Acad¬ 
emy they turn it down.” 

She spoke quite eloquently. He enjoyed, while 
he was irritated by the eloquence. He had an im¬ 
pulse to stimulate it. Each, it will be seen, was ready 
to stimulate the other. 

“It all sounds very pathetic and moving and all 
that kind of thing,” he said; “and I can see all that 
about working for a year and then being turned 
down. But you weren’t turned down.” 

“No. Exactly. And as I wasn’t, in view of all 
that had to be done to get in, don’t you agree that I 
was very modest in my price?” 

“No, I don’t.” There was some extraordinary 
undercurrent or a confluence of conflicting under¬ 
currents here—something terrible with the terrible 
energy of youth. 

“I don’t,” he repeated with a little frown, 
minatory as it seemed to her. “I think it was an 
arbitrary price. All prices for pictures are.” Once 
he paused, perhaps to consider why he chose to fight 
so hard for so minor a difference between buyer and 
seller. “They’re bound to be. All prices are ar¬ 
bitrary that are not ruled by a market. That’s sense. 
You don’t sell pictures by the square foot. If you 



THE HOARDING 


105 


did you’d be entitled to ask the market quotation 
at the moment. But with your work who’s to say? 
There are probably a dozen people showing on the 
walls at this moment whose work isn’t as good as 
yours, who are no better known than you, and who 
are asking twice as much as you. But there are 
other people—I don’t say who are doing as good 
work, I’m no judge in the pure art sense—who are 
asking less.” 

“But I don’t think I want to take less, Mr. Box- 
rider. I think I will decide to leave the picture in 
the hope-” 

“Well, look here,” with an air of a great conces¬ 
sion, “as I’ve come so far—I didn’t mean to spring 
anything more—but as I am here I’ll do this: I’ll 
go to sixty if you’ll meet me—split the difference.” 

He could see her hesitate. He did not doubt that 
she was pleased she had got an extra ten pounds 
out of him. Possibly she was. Possibly she was 
extraordinarily excited by the thought of the relief 
that money promised. Many things were possible; 
for instance this, that that crazy impulse to force 
him to dramatize his instinctive commercialism was 
still alive in her. 

“I might take sixty-five.” 

“No; sixty is my figure. You can leave it, Miss 
Senior, if you must. But it’s a fair offer.” 

He saw now, and she owned with a little spasm 
of half -resentment, that she’d let him see that she 
meant to surrender. It would not be defeat, of 
course; it would be divided honour. Only she was 




106 


THE HOARDING 


still enjoying this development of the real man and 
she didn’t want it to stop. A memory of what that 
money signified to her had returned now, and she 
framed the sentence of acceptance. But he was still 
speaking. 

i ‘Sixty is a fair price, a very fair price. If I 
hadn’t seen that it would fit the idea exactly I’d not 
have offered anything. As it does fit the idea-” 

“But what is the idea?” She was curious, but 
certainly not excited. 

He was much too certain of himself to hesitate. 

“The idea? Kingford’s cocoa. That’s the idea.” 

“But whatever do you mean—you—you don’t 
mean-” 

“What do I mean? Why, that I’m going to use 
your i Waiting’ to advertise Kingfords. That girl 
is going to be the ‘Kingford girl’—the girl who 
drinks nothing else; she’s waiting for Kingford’s. 
She’ll be all over London in three months; she’ll 
be as popular as Sunny Jim used to be, only she’s 
not to be laughed at but loved.” He boggled over 
the word—a funny word to be on his lips, he re¬ 
flected. “And there’ll be another commission for 
you, you can bet your life on that, Miss Senior. 
When we’ve taught the public to know the Kingford 
girl we’ll let them have her doing other things with 
the stuff—according to the season—or time o’ day. 
Playing golf, swimming, having Kingford’s for 
breakfast, buying it in a shop and refusing substi¬ 
tutes, going-” 

“But”—she could not stop him until now, strain- 





THE HOARDING 


107 


ing though she’d been to get in her word—“but I 
really couldn’t think of it. If I’d known what you 
wanted my picture for, I’d have refused from the 
beginning. ’ ’ 

“You’d what?” He was quite obviously aston¬ 
ished; almost breathless with astonishment. “You 
couldn’t think of it? But I’m buying your picture; 
I’m paying you your price.” 

4 4 Oh, no, you ’re not! ’ ’ The pale chin became very 
firm. 4 4 You’re not now , Mr. Boxrider. I didn’t 
close with your offer. And even if I had done I 
should feel myself perfectly free to withdraw my 
agreement.” 

44 But what on earth do you mean?” There was a 
gleam in his eye, a sudden angry flush in his cheek. 
And to his anger hers responded. 

“I mean what I say. I should think it would be 
perfectly clear. I don’t like advertisements—of any 
kind. I think they are coarse and vulgar and mere¬ 
tricious. They appeal to the stupid and gullible; 
and I object most strongly to them.” 

44 But I’m not asking you to advertise a quack 
medicine. This is a perfectly genuine article. It’s 
the best cocoa on the market—honestly it is.” 

44 It may be. I don’t know anything about it.” 

44 You don’t mean to say that when an honest 
article is offered to the public and you’re offered a 
fair price to allow your picture to be used to help 
the sale of that honest article, you’re going to re¬ 
fuse? I say it’s the best cocoa there is.” 

44 But,” with an answer that only her sex could 


108 


THE HOARDING 


have provided her with, “but then I don’t like 
cocoa.” 

He looked at her for a minute almost dazed, a 
little confused by what seemed to him the flagitious 
irrelevancy of that answer. But his pause was only 
momentary. 

“You really mean you won’t sell?” 

“Not to have my work vulgarized.” 

He made a sound of despair. 

“Vulgarized! How is it vulgarized? Is the art 
you see in the National Gallery vulgarized because 
it’s seen by every class in the country? And how 
is your picture vulgarized because it’s seen by mil¬ 
lions of men, women and children—millions more 
than ever saw a Gainsborough or a Van Dyck. I’ve 
got in my mind all kinds of stands. One by the 
National Gallery itself. There’s a big hoarding 
there. I want to put ‘Waiting’ right across that 
board, and I’ll undertake that for every man who 
turns into the National Gallery to see the ‘Turners,’ 
a thousand will stop for a minute and study the 
‘Senior.’ ” 

“You can’t change my mind for me, Mr. Box- 
rider. ’ ’ 

She had risen, and, awkward and angry, he rose 
too. His ideas had poured forth like a torrent in 
spate; he had had no pauses; whether he had caught 
a glimpse of what was the fact (and a fact she only 
discovered herself later—discovered to her fury), 
the fact that as his voice had gained speed it had 
gained authority, so that for the moment his mood 


THE HOARDING 


109 


conquered hers and she listened—whether he’d seen 
that is quite doubtful. “You can’t change my mind 
for me, Mr. Boxrider,” was not a calm withholding 
on her part; it was a shrill, declaratory thing. But 
he was angry still—too angry to see. 

“I think your decision’s absurd! It’s difficult to 
be patient with you. Did you never hear of Millais ’ 
‘Bubbles’!” (Whistler’s portrait of his mother had 
not at this time been used as a poster.) “Aren’t 
there R.A.’s whose pictures are used! Don’t the 
best black-and-white men fight for this work!” 

“Go to them, then. Ask them.” 

“Well, I might do. But I’m not going to. That 
picture of yours is exactly what I want. It fits into 
a scheme. And—” (he came an inch closer), the 
thing that he said now may have been melodrama; 
but she remembered it—“and I’m going to get it.” 

“Of course you are not. You forget I haven’t 
sold it.” 

“You’re merely being obstinate and prejudiced. 
And I won’t take ‘no’ for an answer. In your own 
interest I won’t. I’ll come back in a week.” 

He walked to the door; there were no compliments 
by way of farewell. He let himself out. She was 
alone again in a flash. 

And only then did it occur to her that when he 
had threatened to come back she had not forbidden 
him, told him that she would be out. 

She took a step towards the door. 

But he, standing on the street side of it for a 
pause quite long enough for any purpose in her 


110 


THE HOARDING 


mind, went down into the street at last, and turned 
away still unrecalled. 

Boxrider would have denied savagely that he was 
a dreamer; that he had ever dreamed a dream in 
his life. But Beech found him pleasantly silent for 
the rest of the day. And when he had got home 
and had had his supper those two parents of his, 
with their divine secret of possessing the most 
astonishing son in the entire length of London, 
watched him with unsparing surveillance, and when 
he had gone up exchanged glances. 

“Got something on ’is mind, mother.” 

Mother did not nod, did not speak: merely looked 
into the fire (there was always a rag of fire in that 
kitchen grate, summer as well as winter), and she 
looked into that little flame now, seeing afar off, as 
it is given to mothers to do, the first tiny shadow 
of a danger. 

A good enough pair, these, to look at, though not 
a pair to leave any distinct impression even on an 
observing mind. The man with an odd air of being 
still somehow just a little astonished by Life, even 
as it was presented to one now in his late ’fifties, he 
had always felt that his son knew more than he did, 
even while the boy had been at school. He sat there, 
with his long, pale face, pale eyes, shaven upper lip 
contrasting with the clipped beard, and went on re¬ 
flecting without speaking. All his life he had been 
with the West Ham Corporation. A good job his: 
for years now he had had the collection of gas ac¬ 
counts, and he had done it with sufficient tact to be 


THE HOARDING 


111 


popular and yet with enough success to he approved 
by his authority. He had learnt to 4 4 study folks/ ’ 
especially ‘ 4 folks in corners,” who had to have a 
little time to pay. But he had never studied anyone 
like Richard. He found his son as difficult to read 
as he found “mother” easy. As for her, she talked 
little: a woman of pervasive calm. Nothing had 
ever ruffled her, brought a shadow across the blue 
of her eyes, taken a touch of colour from her round, 
smooth, glowing cheek. She sat there, a small, ro¬ 
tund figure, for the first time with a doubt in her 
mind. 

Her son was upstairs, but presently she could hear 
him coming down. ... It was now that suddenly 
she stood up as there came through the closed door 
the sound of someone slipping on the stairs, fol¬ 
lowed by a suppressed groan. 

“It’s Dick.” 

Father only got to his feet by the time she was in 
the doorway, but he was in time to catch Dick’s 
explanation. 

“Like a mug, I slipped. ’Fraid it’s a sprain.” 

II 

Apparently Boxrider had been dreaming. 

How else did he, sure-footed as he was, trip on 
the stairs and be found a minute later sitting at the 
stairfoot with a sprained ankle? When, next day, 
a doctor was called in he said it would be a three 
weeks’ job. 


112 


THE HOARDING 


The thing disgusted Boxrider as nothing had ever 
done. He would have to leave Beech in charge, and 
just when he had begun to get a hold on things. 
Gladden, for instance, had asked him to call. But 
above everything there was Kingfords. Gladden 
could wait; Kingfords must not be allowed to. That 
picture must be bought at once; and since he could 
not go, and writing was useless, he would have to 
send Beech. It infuriated him to think of Beech 
going to that girl with his feeble gentlemanli¬ 
ness. . . . But she might sell to someone else, and 
if that happened. . . . 

For three, four, five days he struggled against the 
conviction that he could not go himself. Then he 
yielded to circumstances. The week would be up. 
“I’ll come back,” he had said, “in a week.” Beech 
must come out to Minton; so he wrote to his senior 
partner. And the next evening there w T as that 
partner coming delicately up the stairs and talking 
to Boxrider’s parents—as their son told them after¬ 
wards—like some rotten squire among his villagers. 
The senior, with a look of distaste for the stuffy, 
crowded little room with its cheap lithographs (pre¬ 
sented to collectors of coupons of “Bullpip,”) set 
himself gingerly on the one bedroom chair, and the 
talk began. But suddenly Boxrider cleared his 
throat. 

“Now, there’s something else, Beech, and here 
you’ve got to go careful.” (Boxrider’s slovenly 
English always profoundly irritated his partner.) 

“What is it?” 


THE HOARDING 


113 


“It’s this. I didn’t tell yon—knew yon would not 
be interested. I’ve got a real cinch though. It’s for 
Kingfords.” 

“Kingfords,” Beech frowned. “I thought King- 
fords was in my hands.” He didn’t like this talk 
of Kingfords on Boxrider’s lips; still less did he 
like what the use of such talk seemed to suggest. 

Boxrider shrugged shoulders, though with a quick 
smile and deprecatory wave of arm. “Oh, yes! I 
know all that, Beech. But I don’t agree that if one 
of us sees a good idea that would suit some client 
who’s being worked by the other, the chap with the 
idea isn’t to chip in. That would be fool’s policy. 
We either want business or we don’t. 1 say we do.” 

11 Certainly, certainly. But all the same there are 
—er—departments of-” 

“Blow departments and don’t frown like that for 
any’s sake. You look like a sick governess and give 
me the pip. What I’m on to is going to put money 
—cash—bawbees into your pocket as well as mine. 
So let’s get on with it.” 

“Well”—impatiently—“what is this precious 
scheme of yours?” 

Boxrider leaned forward and spoke impressively. 
“What I want—what I’ve wanted for a long time 
—is to convince you that the advertisements King¬ 
fords are putting out are a mere waste of money.” 

“I suppose you realize that when you say that 
you are involving me?” 

“Oh, yes, I realize that!” said Boxrider cheer¬ 
fully. He was sorry, but Beech must be got to 



114 


THE HOARDING 


understand that the copy he had turned out for 
Kingfords was hopelessly feeble, woolly. 4 ‘But 
they’re complaining themselves—you know they are. 
They’re always grousing. We mustn’t let them go 
on doing that. And what I’m out to do is to put 
them ahead right away. And I’m doing it. I’ve 
got the scheme in hand, and when you’ve done your 
bit-” 

‘ ‘ My bit V ’ put in Beech, a little shrilly. ‘ 4 1 think 
before I have any hand in this-” 

‘‘ There you go with that sick-governess look 
again! Your bit, that would have been my bit if I 
hadn’t got tied by the leg.” The swift, energetic 
mind of this young man must, it will be seen, always 
be moving on, perhaps relentlessly. But it was not 
a studied relentlessness that was in action. “But 
you’ll have to put your best manners forward, wear 
a clean collar, and pull yourself together if you’re 
to deal with that girl.” 

Beech started. “Girl? What girl? What wo¬ 
man have you been involving in my—our affairs? 
Because-” 

‘‘ Oh, you ’ll find a woman is pretty badly involved! 
You’re in for it, Beech. I’d really like to see you 
up against her; I would indeed.” 

“You still don’t condescend to make your¬ 
self-” 

“Clear? I’ll make myself clear, my dear old 
soul.” 

There was a kind of policy in his treatment of 






THE HOARDING 


115 


Beech. It seemed to him that it was absolutely 
essential that this man with his curiously dilated 
consciousness, his slightly abnormal psychology, 
must be thrust into life. He ought not to be spared, 
or protected, or afforded special tendernesses; he 
must be pushed out into the world; must see his 
prejudices trampled on. He must, in the common 
phrase, be made a man of. Boxrider’s character 
has been misread if it is denied the possession of 
generosity, tolerance, even mercy. But a young, 
swift mind which has won all its victories by frontal 
attack may, while yet in its hot youth, fail to realize 
the importance of movement upon a flank. He 
rather liked Beech as a matter of fact, and (as he 
often said to himself) when he’d shaken the old fel¬ 
low up, made him see straight, he would do a good 
deal for him. In the meantime he was running on. 

“Yes. I’ll make myself clear. I’ve done so as 
a matter of fact, I think. I’ve told you your job, 
and if I wasn’t tied up here I’d be after you—I 
swear I would, and watch you at it trying to per¬ 
suade her when I couldn’t.” 

“Oh, there was something you couldn’t do, was 
there?” 

“Oh, there’s nothing,” with that cheerfulness 
which Beech found hardest of all to bear in his 
partner , 6 ‘ there’s nothing that I can’t do eventually! 
I get what I want in the end. I told her as much. 
I told her I’d come back this week and make her 
sell.” 


116 


THE HOARDING 


“Sell? Sell? Sell what? And you haven’t 
troubled yet, by the way, to tell me what this 
she-” 

“This she is an artist, the artist I ought to say. 
A Miss Lesley Senior. Painted a picture called 
‘Waiting.’ Hung in the Academy. Picture seen by 
me. I, being pretty well entirely on the spot that 
day, saw in a flash that that picture was what King- 
fords have been waiting for. So off goes I to the 
lady—there’s the address on that envelope—and 
offer her fifty. Her price was seventy pounds. We 
agree to split the diff., but no sooner is that settled 
than she gets at my object. And what d’yer think 
happens then? She refuses. Point blank. Says no. 
Like that.” 

“She thought advertising vulgar?” It was curi¬ 
ous—that note of rising, but suppressed, sympathy. 

“Perhaps,” Beech was murmuring, “perhaps she 
was right.” 

“Right? You to say that! Look here, I don’t 
know that I’ll give you the job.” 

“Give me the job! I think I might remind you, 
Boxrider, that while no doubt I’m almost a cypher 
in what was once my business-” 

4 4 Oh, look here, Beech, do chuck that hopeless rot! 
Anyone would think sometimes that you were a 
child. I don’t care that for these points of etiquette 
—if it is etiquette. But you’ll have to pull yourself 
together all the same for this job, which I ought to 
have done but which I’m pushing on to you. And, 
for any sake, don’t try that bleat of sympathy. If 




THE HOARDING 


117 


she’ll sell the picture, we’re made. It’s exactly 
what we want. It’s simple and it’s beautiful, and yet 
it isn’t sloppy, like those silly round-the-table pic¬ 
tures that make men, and often enough women, jeer 
or feel sick. It’s the picture that was painted to 
put Kingfords ahead, and when she’s given in, as 
she’s going to do, as she’s got to do, we’ll put ’em 
ahead.” 

“But even now, you know, Boxrider, you haven’t 
condescended to give me the facts.” 

“Facts? Those are the facts—except that there’s 
this. I said I’d come round to-day to hear her sur¬ 
render. She’ll be expecting me. Well, obviously I 
can’t go, and so you’ll have to.” 

“But suppose I disagree with you-” 

“Oh—do—cut—that—out! You don’t disagree 
with me. You’re not such a born mule. You want 
to live. You want business as much as 1 do. 
And-” 

There was further argument, the one man keeping 
his temper, pressing smilingly and at last winning; 
the other flushing up, talking quickly and shrilly, 
and at last yielding. 

Ill 

The idea of setting out to interview a young woman 
—a young woman of any kind, subtly excited Beech. 
If he was angry in his hot, confused way—as he was 
at every task given him by Boxrider—he was extra¬ 
ordinarily conscious of a strange tart pleasure. He 
had not said to Boxrider, “What is she like?” He 




118 


THE HOARDING 


had had it on his tongue to ask, and then his dislike 
of being helped by that man had silenced him. 

A woman artist. He did not know. Blue-stock¬ 
inged probably. Probably wore pince-nez, was 
dressed in sloppy and spotted velveteen. He took 
considerable pains to lower what were undoubtedly 
expectations. He had never seen any of these 
women, but he had read about them. He ransacked 
all his lore, and indifferently well assembled lore it 
was! 

But there can be little question that one thought 
which really did operate to attract him to this Pair 
(or Sallow) Unseen was that, clearly, she had defied 
Boxrider. His mind advanced to her therefore with 
a sympathy that slowly took on passion. She had 
his own point of view in these matters. She de¬ 
spised the advertiser; she would do nothing to aid 
the blatancies, the coarse appeals, the crude vulgari¬ 
ties of that trade; he remembered with a mental 
sneer that he had heard it called a “profession,”— 
his a profession! And he was supposed to be setting 
out to convince her of her errors, he was “in¬ 
structed”—he took a malicious pleasure in thus 
contributing to his own self-despite—he w T as in¬ 
structed to reprove her for holding precisely the 
views he held himself. And in this preposterous 
situation he had submitted to orders! 

From thus presenting the case he passed to a sud¬ 
den and inevitably confused and angry examination 
of his relation to his partner. How came it that 
he was on the errand at all? True, Boxrider was 



THE HOARDING 


119 


held up by his accident. But how was it that he 
(Beech) had not so much as been asked if he would 
be willing to go? He had been told to go. Yes, 
cried this aroused protestant, ordered —like a clerk, 
like Bexley. No, if it had been Bexley, he argued 
with that mental shrillness to which his thoughts so 
quickly and easily rose, Boxrider would have said 
4 4 please/ ’ He was always sharply polite to the 
staff. 

Suddenly Beech drew himself together in that 
curious half feminine way of his (and in important 
respects his psychology was distinctly feminine). 
He had not seen this woman yet; and when he did 
see her he would show his independence ... a new 
sickly thought came. He would not tell Boxrider 
afterwards . . . not clearly . . . would not he 
though! argued the second voice. . . . 

When he reached the address and had rung the 
bell, he found himself forgetting Boxrider, forget¬ 
ting even his errand; and mastered by a sense of 
the adventure. He, the recluse, the ascetic, w^as 
submitting himself to a delicate, sweet, astonishing 
experience. He was going to sit very close to a 
woman, was going not merely to exchange that dis¬ 
sembling small talk which he had heard other men 
use to the opposite sex, but was to discuss with her 
a question of real importance to her—a question 
which would probably rouse in her the essential 
woman, whatever that might be, give him an insight 
into that—as it seemed to his unsophisticated fancy 
—miraculously disposed sex. 


120 


THE HOARDING 


When the door opened he found himself con¬ 
fronted by a fair woman of full figure, extraordi¬ 
narily fair, who regarded him mysteriously, if 
smilingly, from blue eyes. The small extremely 
white left hand with which she held the door carried 
a wedding-ring, so that even as he murmured, 4 4 Miss 
Lesley Senior?” he knew she would say, “No.” 

“No, I am Mrs. Graeme. Did you want to see 
Miss Senior?” 

He felt uncertain about this Mrs. Graeme. She 
belonged to the type of woman who contrives an 
air of amused detachment. He felt curiously aware 
of the presence in her of experience. Married? 
Perhaps that was it. He felt handled, a child— 
though really he could not believe she was remotely 
interested in him. But he had a funny sense of 
relief that she was not Miss Senior. He told her 
that he did want to see Miss Senior—“Rather; it*s 
business.” 

“Oh, yes, business!” She had nodded and had 
led him into the room where before his partner had 
gone. “You are Mr. Boxrider perhaps?” 

“Oh, no! Certainly not!” he cried, with what he 
felt was an absurd and indecorous appearance of 
anxiety. “My name is Beech. Boxrider is my 
partner.” He wanted to say my “junior partner.” 
He felt her studying his face with the first show of 
curiosity which he had discovered in her since his 
arrival. 

“Oh, then I expect you have come on the same 
business as brought him here last week!” 


THE HOARDING 


121 


‘‘No, certainly not—that is-” But by this he 

fonnd himself in an open doorway facing a slender 
woman younger than Mrs. Graeme—an infinitely 
more disturbing and affecting vision; even then he 
seems to have conceived of her as of a vision; 
someone with mysterious attributes, who shone . . . 
(even then, too, he thought of her as “Lesley”). 

His mind was involved in an immense confusion, 
yet in some experience intangibly delicious. He 
found himself affected as he had not supposed him¬ 
self capable of being; and yet in one transient mo¬ 
ment of detachment he discovered himself thrilled 
and delighted at his own capacity to be thus moved. 

And in the meantime an introduction seemed to 
be proceeding. (Introduction? He did not seem to 
need an introduction. The mere idea seemed to 
some obscure fancy of his preposterous.) 

Yet introduction there was. 

“This is Mr. Beech. He is Mr. Boxrider’s part¬ 
ner.” Thus Netta, with a smile which had no in¬ 
terest for Beech now, his eyes being elsewhere— 
otherwise he might have wondered what, precisely, 
these little, tired, sleepy smiles of hers signified 
really. 

“How do you do?” Lesley spoke coldly and 
guardedly. Perhaps she had caught a glimpse of 
Mrs. Graeme’s eyes. The gestures of that “stable 
companion” of hers would have meanings for her 
presumably by this: they had lived together for 
two years. 

“Won’t you sit down, Mr. Beech?” 



122 


THE HOARDING 


Beech, his mind already collapsing, lowered him¬ 
self with intense self-conscionsness until he came 
in grateful contact with the springs of the nearest 
chair. 

“You wanted to see me? I suppose it’s about the 
picture.’ 9 

She was curious; she may have been angry; she 
was at least willing for Mrs. Graeme to withdraw 
and close the door. She could not really quite make 
out her visitor. He looked mature. What she would 
call middle-aged. . . . And this uncomfortable¬ 
ness. . . . 

“Yes, about the picture ,’ 9 he was murmuring. 
“My partner—well, he’s sprained his ankle. Can’t 
come—and he had an appointment with you, I 
understand. ’ ’ 

“Oh, no!” She was very cold and firm. “Per¬ 
haps you have not had the facts given to you. But 
he came here a week ago and asked me to sell one 
of my pictures to use as an advertisement. As I 
told him, I would not think of it. But apparently 
lie refused to be content. He said,” she proclaimed 
with what was certainly intended to convey the idea 
of indignation, “that he wouldn’t take my answer, 
that he’d come back.” 

‘ ‘ He would, ’ ’ cried Beech with a sudden malicious 
outburst. He checked himself at once. “I mean,” 
trying to smile, “he’s always very keen.” 

“Possibly,” answered this cold Miss Senior; “but 
I gave him his answer, and I can only repeat it to 
you. ’ ’ 


THE HOARDING 


123 


For the first time Beech dared to lift his eyes; he 
had been studying her fingers, observing their 
length and suppleness and delicate brownness, con¬ 
trasting them with a thrill of delight and approval 
with the smaller, shorter, and infinitely whiter hand 
of Mrs. Graeme. But he met her eyes now suddenly 
as he put an eager question, “You don’t believe in 
advertising ? ’’ 

“I?” she said slowly, considering him again with 
astonishment. “I don’t know that I have formed 
any views. I only know how I feel about my pic¬ 
ture. ’ ’ 

“Well, you think it’s a degradation of your art?” 

“If you choose to put it like that— yes.” 

“I wonder why you believe that—I mean that it 
is a degradation?” 

She looked at him again, but this time with less 
energy, and he had a horrible and consuming sus¬ 
picion that he was failing to impress her, that at 
any moment she might yawn. 

“But,” he cried eagerly, “I can guess your an¬ 
swer”—her attention must be kept—“and I expect 
you’re feeling that, as you’ve already told my—my 
partner how you feel, you ought not to be called 
upon a second time.” Oh! if only this intuitional 
comprehension of her, as he tried fondly to think it, 
would find some echo in her, some show—if not of 
delight, at least of character. So far she was pre¬ 
senting herself as something quite impersonal and 
static. He had a blinding consciousness of futility. 
In a sense he did not know even now to what he 


THE HOARDING 


124 

was opposed. “Called on a second time,” he was 
continuing hurriedly, “to defend your position— 
which is—which I ’m sure is a reasonable position. ’ ’ 

“It is very good of you to say so,” she observed 
with a half smile. Now what on earth had she 
meant by that? Was she really merciless enough 
for the thing to have the intention of irony? 

“But I mean it. Look here, Miss Senior. I’d like 
you to know.” He had the idea at this moment of 
capturing her—he who had never dared to capture 
a woman before—and yet, remember, he had seen 
her for ten minutes only! Well, but there was alive 
in him now some sense of the future, as if he rec¬ 
ognized, in the Beech of the present, one who acted 
for some Beech of the future—the Beech who, in 
fact, would come into being so soon as he had had 
mental and spiritual leisure to consider the im¬ 
mense impress this girl had made on him. 

He considered his words for a moment, and then 
went on. “I’d like you to know. I mean what I 
said. I think you’re probably”—(the “probably” 
was the last concession to any stirring of loyalty to 
his partner)—“probably—no, really —right.” 

“You think”—she spoke quietly, and for the 
moment he had no notion of her intention—“you 
think your partner’s wrong.” 

“Yes, I do.” 

“Did he send you to say that?” 

*‘Send me!” His eyes had begun to burn, in his 
cheek there was suddenly a colour. “Send me! He 
doesn’t send me. I’m—I’m the senior. I don’t 


THE HOARDING 


125 


mean”—he was trying to escape from a new trap 
—“I don’t mean that I’m really so much older than 
he is, but I happen to be senior. I came because 
he couldn’t.” He stopped, feeling suddenly in¬ 
tolerably absurd. 

“Still,” she said coldly, “you have only now de¬ 
cided to disagree with him.” 

“No. It’s a disagreement in fundamentals. It is, 
really.” (Overboard with Boxrider—overboard 
with him!) “Only one doesn’t often have the op¬ 
portunity to talk to one who”—he became daring 
—“who sympathises.” 

She was growing stiff, pushing her chair a little 
further away, as if contriving an attitude which 
should symbolize some obscure mental process by 
means of which she put herself further out of his 
reach, as an answer to his confidence! 

“You must not include me, Mr. Beech. I—” she 
tried to smile—“I must not take sides. You want 
me to debate abstract questions. I only know that 
I can’t agree to sell my picture, and”—rising— 
“I’m sure there’s nothing more that can be said.” 

He got up uncomfortably. He had not done at 
all what he wanted to do. 

“Except this,” he hurried on to say, “only this. 
You don’t understand my point of view, I’m afraid. 
But fundamentally it is yours. You’d be bored to 
know the details of how I ever drifted into my pres¬ 
ent occupation. But I did drift in. I assure you 
of that. You may be less bored”—he paused, per¬ 
haps himself obscurely conscious of being a passive 


126 


THE HOARDING 


instrument in declaring the intentions of history,— 
“you may be less bored to know that I hope to 
make advertising a little less unworthy to associate 
with the arts.” 

Grandiloquence? Perhaps. She made no com¬ 
ment, merely smiling wisely and leading him towards 
the door. 

He was outside before he fully realized the utter 
futility, in the emotional sense, of the whole thing. 
They had not even had a fight. 


I 


CHAPTER VIII 
I 

Lesley liad no great pride in that last victory: 
that extraordinary twitching creature—what was 
his name?—Beech, with his funny little abrupt dig¬ 
nities: “He didn’t send me!” and with his easy 
surrender. She had a strange, hot feeling all the 
time he had been with her; she could feel his eye 
running over her, seeking her out. He had, she 
remembered, made her shake hands with him as he’d 
gone away. It was quite unnecessary. It wasn’t 
as if he was a man she knew, liked. The call had 
been strictly a business one. . . . That hot hand 
of his pressing hers. She could feel it still. 

Then her mind turned to the circumstances of that 
call. This wretched man had come because the other 
man was sick. Oddly enough, she did not charac¬ 
terize him as the other “wretched” man. 

Now, this woman was young, and this artist was 
still so little accustomed to a sense of achievement 
in her art that she could not forbear to go back 
sometimes to the place where that picture of hers 
hung. 

You looked at your own picture, and then of 
course others—gay idlers—looked too, stood back as 

127 


m 


THE HOARDING 


yon had done, there being something, presumably, 
to see. And of course there was something to see. 

She entered Burlington House and went through 
the hall and up the staircase, past the sculpture in 
the front gallery, and so to Room XI, and there 
her “girl” stood bright and smiling in her vivid 
pigments. She still could feel the thrill of that first 
glimpse. A little throng moved to and fro, and she 
was about to take up her accustomed position when 
a voice spoke from behind her. 

“Miss Senior, surely.” She turned to meet the 
eye of Claude Coleton. Feeling suddenly involved 
in an excitement that her immediate consciousness 
assured her was inexplicable, she held out her hand, 
smiling the little conscious deprecation of a criti¬ 
cism aimed at the artist found visiting the work of 
her own hands! There really wasn’t any use in a 
suggestion of mere accident. . . . Though what 
would be his thought! Would not a mind, shrinking 
with horror from vulgar ostentation, find here some¬ 
thing odious—an artist in front of her own work? 

“How do you do, Mr. Coleton? And am I to 
thank you for a compliment?” 

“A compliment?” 

“That I find you so close to my picture.” 

To her astonishment a little pucker appeared in 
the smooth forehead—something like a frown. 

“Won’t you let me take you to the tea-room 
where we could talk? You must be tired.” 

But she wanted him to speak of her picture. 

“Tired? I’ve only just arrived, and surely you’ll 


THE HOARDING 


129 


let me look at my own picture. You know, don’t 
you, that that is my picture ?” 

“Why, yes, I believe I did know that, Miss 
Senior/’ 

She looked at him in mock pleading. “You 
haven’t told me what you think of it.” 

“I?” he cried briskly. “I? My opinion of a 
picture is no opinion! It is, I am sure, a most 
charming expression of a most charming person.” 

She had leisure to admire his art of delivering a 
sentiment, deliberately unreal and intended to be 
recognized as such. 

“But do come away,” he went on, “and have 
tea.” 

Suddenly her eyes were lifted to his, studying him 
with a swift, strange surmise. For she had caught a 
hint of an explanation. (An explanation had seemed 
needed. And here it was suggested.) She had 
stupidly thought that for some reason he had not 
liked her picture, that its treatment or craftsman¬ 
ship had offended some sense in him. It was not 
that. She had been ready to believe him a critic. 
He was not a critic. Perhaps he knew nothing about 
art. He was not interested in her picture. But he 
did not dislike it. He did not dislike this specific 
picture, that is. What he disliked was that there 
should be that picture, any picture by her. With 
that swift, almost startling intuition which is the 
birthright of all women, she had read him. He was 
interested in her. She knew that—she had known 
that, that night at the club. But, being interested 


130 


THE HOARDING 


in her, he did not like her to be painting pictures.' 
He hated achievement in the women in whom he 
was interested. He mistrusted that impulse to self- 
expression. A woman had no busines to interpret 
herself in art: it was her business to interpret her¬ 
self in terms of her relation to some man. 

And that little unreal compliment, so intentionally 
unreal, was a form of reproof really. I give you 
this dummy, this unreality, and its want of value 
corresponds with my valuation of you—not as you 
are, but in the character of artist which you affect. 

She looked at him quickly once, even though she 
found his egotism for a moment blinding. Egotism? 
But there was something else. An approach to her¬ 
self—not to the artist, but to the woman. By con¬ 
sciousness of that she could be moved—what was 
the word?—thrilled. 

His air of experience did not repel, as it might 
be expected to do, her young fresh mind. It drew 
her, it excited; and she was, of course—though she 
did not know it—extraordinarily flattered. Here 
was a man whom the world considered. Letting him 
lead her away to tea, she could tell from the way 
they were observed that people recognized Coleton, 
There were whispers, glances from interested eyes. 
“The Coleton” she heard one woman, with tongue 
less strictly controlled, declare to her neighbour. . . . 
And yet she had only awakened now to the fact that 
she had him at her side—this distinguished person. 
She had been thinking of the picture and other 
things—other people. She was seeing herself par- 



THE HOARDING 


131 


ticularly involved in a preposterous argument with 
a young, gauche, assertive man. . . . Well, here 
was the proper antidote. 

It seemed an extravagantly conceived coincidence 
all the same, that this man now giving her tea should 
speak as he presently did. Not that it was in its 
character of coincidence that Lesley saw this inter¬ 
vention of his. 

“You have not sold the picture?” he murmured. 

He had a way of murmuring like that. In his less 
compelled moments he always murmured. 

“No, I have not sold it,” she observed frankly. 

“I am glad to hear that. I mean,” he went on 
with a kind of tender approval, drawing a little 
nearer and beating gently downwards with a hand 
that seemed to portend secrecy, “I mean I am so 
glad you repelled ... I met Netta—I should say 
Mrs. Graeme—and she told me of your refusal to 
listen to some dreadful person who wanted to buy 
it for—for advertising purposes.” 

That was the thing he had said which had sud¬ 
denly and so profoundly disturbed her. She did not 
want to discuss this matter with him. She was 
angry with Netta. What business was it of Netta’s? 
And then he went murmuring on. 

“I was so glad you took that line. This adver¬ 
tising is so insidious; one is instinctively re¬ 
volted. . . . Dreadful people! No gentleman 

would-” and so on. And it was all true. He was 

only expressing her own views. 

“It is a debasement of art. It is dragging some- 



132 


THE HOARDING 


thing fine in the public gutter. We who stand for 
art have something committed to our guardianship, 
and ill will be the day when w r e forget our trust. 
I rejoice, my dear Miss Lesley Senior, that you have 
not failed.” 

Once there came a funny little hovering suspicion 
. . . like a book—talking softly like a book. . . . 
When he might have talked like a man . . . and in 
any case she didn’t want these praises. 

Moreover, of course, even here there was some 
essential unreality. He did not like her to be an 
artist. Why go on then? And now another flash 
of illumination. How odd were these moments of 
intuition. But she looked at him again. . . . Did 
she interpret him aright? If she had sold the pic¬ 
ture, would her crime have been so much that she 
had debased her art as that she had done something 
to establish her economic independence? A man— 
this man—did not like the women in whom he was 
interested to have that kind of economic indepen¬ 
dence. 

But she must respond. 

“Failed? No, I haven’t failed. How could I? 
Did I not only the other night receive an admoni¬ 
tion?” 

She could feel rather than see the gathering again 

of some small disapproval. He did not like- 

What was it?—a note that he must have detected 
. . . facetiousness. And really she was astonished 
at herself—at that thing in her voice and mind and 
attitude. For she had not until now, in this sudden 



THE HOARDING 


133 


meeting in the way, her mind with his, been at all 
conscious of any impulse to laugh. 

She had only observed, reverenced, paid court to 
an ideal, and she could have been ready to assev¬ 
erate her continuance in reverence. And now this 
laughter. 

She was annoyed with herself, independently of her 
annoyance that she had brought that pucker back 
into his forehead. But even while she reproved 
herself there abode, lurking, that old hint, humour of 
—yes . . . softness: a softness that could not stand 
against laughter, the faintest laugh—the mere 
whisper of it. She brushed that thing aside as she 
had brushed it before. How unsteady her mind 
seemed to be! She would not listen, tolerate. Here 
was this man with his fine reticence, his shrinking 
from the noise and vulgarity of crowds. It was his 
fineness, his delicacy. . . . She to laugh! . . . She 
grew serious, though she would not put it to herself 
that she compelled herself to seriousness. 

“You have set me right if ever I was in danger 
of yielding in that business,’’ she went on in an 
even voice. 

He nodded, mollified if still uneasy, suspicious. 

“Ah, one does one’s best! Some day it may not 
be necessary to take a strong line—to take any line. 
But let us talk of something more interesting than 
causes; let us talk of people. Tell me of yourself. 
No, I don’t mean about your work in this place. I 
want to realize you as an entity. And I find it so 
hard to realize the entity of a woman who will tell 


134 


THE HOARDING 


me only of what she does for a living. Tell me how 
you pass your days, how you amuse yourself. Tell 
me—a woman can help me so much to understand 
her if she tells me her little delicate prejudices—her 
favourite colour, the poet she reads-” 

She looked up, trying to preserve a precise static 
attitude—and failing. 

“My colour ... I think, is blue—ultramarines, 
purple. Perhaps you didn’t guess that from my 
picture. But it is my skies that I love to paint. .. .’ 9 

Again that little pucker. 

“Ah! If for a moment, dear Miss Lesley Senior, 
you wouldn’t he so professional. Shop? Yes, I 
love shop—with a man. But a woman may make 
even talking shop seem a waste of time. Shop isn’t 
shopping. She could talk of things so much more 
interesting. Tell me what is your favourite flower.” 
As one might speak to a child! 

His voice seemed to come up against her in long, 
soft waves . . . lapping waves. It seemed absurd 
that he should be asking her that, and she wanted 
to laugh . . . and really an anticlimax of some kind 
did seem to be involved. 

“A favourite flower? Why really I don’t think 
I own such a thing.” 

“But surely some flower enjoys the privilege of 
decorating your home.” 

Decorating her home! “Oh, Netta likes yellow 
roses! She buys roses.” 

“But what do you like?” he pressed gently. She 
could enjoy the pressure, the remote note of anxi- 




THE HOARDING 


135 


ety: it was tributary to herself; but she could also 
find herself aware of some whisper of ironic com¬ 
ment, as if an intelligence outside her own observed 
and smiled and even hinted that that essential un¬ 
reality in the atmosphere would presently be dis¬ 
cover d by herself. “You too may some day— 
smile. ’’ 

She pushed the thing away; she was inclined to 
accept and enjoy what was being offered. Her eyes 
roamed the room and enjoyed the interest shown by 
the other tea-drinkers present in the person giving 
her tea—singling her out. 

“What do you like?—it is one of one’s ways of 
learning a woman’s mind.” 

“But I love all flowers. All. Yes, all.” She 
was sure she did. “Though I suppose I buy roses 
when I want to fill the flat with—with—when I want 
to please Netta, which I usually want to do.” 

“Netta—Mrs. Graeme—isn’t always easy to 
please.” 

She looked up suddenly. Was it question or state¬ 
ment? She wondered what he intended—whether 
he intended anything. In any case, she could not 
see that it was his business. 

“Netta is a very charming person to have as the 
sharer of one’s flat. I always consider myself extra¬ 
ordinarily lucky that she came my way.” 

“How did she come your way?” 

Again that slight pressure behind the voice, as if 
not mere idle curiosity worked to draw information. 

“I met her at the club. I was living in rooms, 



136 


THE HOARDING 


and I was tired of them. I found she was in the 
same condition. Then we planned this joint enter¬ 
prise. ” 

“And so yon knew no more of her than that—she 
is a new friend really? You had, then, no friends 
in common?” 

“None, except those we knew at the club.’’ 

“Ah, yes!” 

He seemed to reflect for a moment, and she de¬ 
cided that she could make her move now. She must, 
she said, go. 

“May not I also-” 

But no, she had an engagement. 

“A picture-dealer in Soho. I have to see him. 
He buys my pot boilers, you know.” 

He frowned as if to indicate that not merely did 
he not know, but that he did not wish to know. 

“I hate—I suppose, my dear Miss Lesley Senior” 
(how he persisted in that elongated form of ad¬ 
dress!), “I’ve no right to say so—but I hate to 
think of your going into those places, chaffering 
with these wretches. It isn’t what you ought to be 
doing. A girl like you should be sipping the sweets 
of life; living vividly a life of beauty and—and 
ease. It is almost intolerable to think of you having 
to submit to these tradesmen.” 

“All the same”—with a laugh—“all the same, 
Mr. Coleton, it’s unavoidable, in view of the fact 
that nobody who has tried it has been able to live 
on air. I know I can’t. So-” She stood up. 

“Then let me come with you in case the man 
should be-” 





THE HOARDING 


137 


“Rude? Oh, he’d never be that! He’d know 
too well what would happen. I’ve driven into him 
quite a wholesome fear of me and my tongue, I 
assure you.” 

She could see the pucker deepening. How he 
hated every new hint of her independence—of her 
power to look after herself. 

“Very well.” He sighed, ceremoniously moved 
her chair so that she could pass, and, still with cere¬ 
mony, led her into Piccadilly. 

“If our ways must part-” 

She smiled, nodded with some slight emphasis, 
and ran across the street, just as a bus bore down. 
She could feel rather than see how the display of 
that coolness and ease in the midst of street dangers 
would newly lacerate his mind. Once in the midst 
of the traffic she turned to look back and smile. And 
the pucker could now be seen across the street. 

The picture-dealer was haggling narrowly and 
stridently with a buyer when Lesley presently 
pierced the gloom of his shop; and sellers having 
to give way to buyers, she sank into a remote corner 
until the man was ready for her. She gave no at¬ 
tention to those voices coming to her out of the 
dimness—voices, it seemed, of paltry souls occupied 
with inconceivably mean ploys—until she remem¬ 
bered that presently she too- 

There were moments when to be out of all this 
she would have surrendered. . . . 

It was almost at once that she found herself be¬ 
ginning to react to the thought of that little talk 
with Claude Coleton. Of the fact of his interest 





138 


THE HOARDING 


in her there could be no question. It occurred to 
her that the development of that interest must now 
rest with her. If she avoided him, withheld herself 
from him now . . . What was it that she wanted? 
She began to tell herself that she did not know 
what she wanted. But then, she inquired of herself, 
did he? What precisely was his intent? If the 
development of his interest rested with her, and she 
did her active part, to what would such development 
tend? For instance, supposing that she was not 
prepared to adrqit to herself that she wished to 
marry him, was it so sure that he wished to marry 
her? He enjoyed her society. He wanted to go on 
enjoying it. He would like to take her out, play 
with her hand, find her eyes looking up into his in 
absorbed admiration. . . . And then he would like 
to pass on. . . . 

That was one diagnosis of the position. But she 
was less sure of that reading once she had made it. 
There had been moments when she had caught a 
flash of red flame in amongst the soft lights of those 
eyes of his. She could have what she wanted . . . 
have what she wanted. 

Only. . . . 

Her reflections were broken in upon by the dealer 
coming towards her, and her business took half an 
hour of absorbing effort. All the same, she was 
taking out her latchkey within two hours of her 
parting with Coleton (the shortness of the time has 
its interest). Entering the tiny white-and-gold hall 
she came suddenly upon Netta. Mrs. Graeme, whose 


THE HOARDING 


139 


back bad been turned, wheeled round, and Lesley 
saw that her eyes shone and that colour burned in 
her soft cheek. 

‘ 4 Look! ’ ’ she cried. 44 Look! There was no name, 
but I have been able to guess who sent them to 
me,” and she held up a nosegay of yellow roses. 
44 Only,’’ with a little joyous laugh, 44 I wonder how¬ 
ever he guessed.” 

44 Why,’’ said Lesley, 44 because I told him. I saw 
him at the Academy, and I told him you bought 
yellow roses whenever you could/’ 

4 4 You—you!” with a smile in which now there 
was nothing of that hovering malice. 4 4 You 
shouldn’t! But still as you did so, I ’ll forgive you! ’ ’ 

44 I had—I had tea with him.” 

Mrs. Graeme looked up, smiling still. Lesley 
spoke with a certain sharpness—even of challenge. 
Apparently she wanted Netta to understand that she 
had been the object of a certain . . . interest? . . . 
perhaps . . . anyhow that she claimed for herself 
significance in his mind. 

And Netta Graeme only smiled, come forward, 
and swiftly kissed her friend. 

44 I am so glad you had such a charming time, 
dear. ’ ’ 

Poor little Lesley! She needed sympathy with 
her pathetic little idea that that man was interested 
in her. 


CHAPTER IX 


I 

Beech did not visit Boxrider to report on his 
failure. Why should he! The senior partner to 
report to the junior! If Boxrider wished to hear 
further he could come to the office. 

And that was precisely what Boxrider did. Three 
days later a cab pulled up in the entrance to Im¬ 
perial Buildings, and Mr. Higgs, happening to dis¬ 
cover the identity of the arrival, deserted his own 
lift in order to help the cripple to limp up the steps 
into D. 

“What *ev you been doing of, sir?” 

“Ankle,” said Boxrider briefly. 

“It didn’t ought,” said Higgs. 

“All the same,” remarked Boxrider, “it did. 

However-” and he allowed himself to be assisted 

across the marble hall. A moment later he was 
limping through the general office of Beech & Box¬ 
rider and filling the doorway of the private room. 
Beech sat there in his place, and looked up with 
that air of sharp displeasure with which always he 
witnessed his partner’s comings and goings. If he 
had a grievance because of Boxrider’s absence—an 
absence which had the effect of exposing himself 

140 



THE HOARDING 


141 


to the staff and particularly to James—he hated 
also to have his partner about him. He was always 
and extraordinarily aware of the pressure upon him 
of a dominant mind; the air seemed subtly charged 
with some quality of that young mastering associate 
of his. He felt himself breathing—Boxrider. He 
felt it now; he had felt it already. Boxrider, limp¬ 
ing through the office, had created a hush there— 
and a moment before James had been whistling 
some slow measure of contempt! Oh, yes, the 
whistling had been aimed at him (Beech). He had 
perfectly understood. 

But there was no whistling now. Only—that man, 
that man come there to triumph over him; to exhibit 
him to himself as weak, futile, incompetent. 

“You’ve come back earlier than you expected,’’ 
he said thinly, looking down his nose. 

“Yes, I’m here. You see, Beech, you did not 
write or send a message, or come round.” 

“But you didn’t expect that, did you?” He tried 
to make it an amused protest, but the angry petu¬ 
lance broke out. 

“No; to be frank, I didn’t expect you to, Beech. 
So I thought I’d better get down and see how things 
were going.” 

“I, being merely senior partner, couldn’t be 
trusted, of course.” 

“You talking through your silly old hat can’t be 
trusted. What on earth is the use of that absurd 
childish prattle?” 

“Childish prattle, is it? Very well, Boxrider. 


142 


THE HOARDING 


Childish prattle! I suppose silence is the only thing 
that befits me.” 

“Do —do try, man, not to be absurd. I wanted 
to get back to look after the work which is specially 
mine—will that do? And that brings me to my 
point—what about Miss Senior’s picture?” 

Beech’s mouth twitched oddly as he tried to 
answer. But for a moment he quite obviously strove 
to project an air of indifference. 

“Really, Boxrider, that picture! It seems to me, 
if you will allow me to say so, that you are behaving 
rather absurdly over that picture. The lady does 
not want to sell it, and I was extremely sorry that 
I had allowed myself to be used as a catspaw—yes, 
Boxrider, I maintain the use of that word. Your 
persecution of her-” 

“Persecution! My dear Beech, one would really 
think you’d been eating something that had turned 
your vision of the world inside out. You’re talking 
like an ass. Persecution!” 

“Permit me to select my own words.” 

“By all means. Only don’t talk so like a book 
or a silly ass, man.” 

“I suppose it is impossible for you, Boxrider, to 
refrain from being offensive-” 

“Oh, you are a governess! I expect to see a ring 
on the middle finger of your right hand in a 
minute. ’ ’ 

“A governess, am I? Well, I am, I hope, also a 
gentleman! I am at least sufficiently a gentleman 
to refrain from persecuting that girl.” 




THE HOARDING 


143 


“Persecuting! I believe you let her talk you 
round. I believe, indeed, that you didn’t want her 
to sell her picture, and I’m not at all sure that you 
didn’t take that line with her.” 

44 Well”—Beech’s voice rose into the high, thin 
note which always accompanied that character of 
speech which he was now using — 4 4 well, as a matter 
of fact, I did take that line. I am not ashamed to 
own that I did take that line.” 

Boxrider leant back with a sigh. 

44 What a man! What an advertiser! What a 
business brain! Really, Beech, I don’t think I’ll 
ever be able to send you on an errand again!” 

44 Send me on an errand!” The voice had now 
reached a crescendo of indignation. (If he had 
known it, James, finding an excuse, had contrived 
to move across to a desk not ordinarily used which 
lay near the door into the private office.) 44 Send 
me on an errand! Confound you, Boxrider! Who 
do you suppose you are and I am? What do you 
imagine to be the relation between us? I tell you 
I will not have such talk! Send me on an errand!” 
He had begun to scream. 44 Send me! I will send 
you, Boxrider! I will send you! I have as much 
right—more right. It is my business-” 

44 So!” ejaculated Boxrider calmly. 44 And in the 
meantime you are advertising to the staff outside 
the fact that you don’t like your partner. Probably 
James is taking a shorthand note.” 

44 I don’t care! I don’t care!” All the same, the 
voice had sunk to a shrill whisper, like wind scream- 



144 


THE HOARDING 


ing between boards, nntil it occurred to Beech that 
even in lowering his voice he did something in 
obedience to Boxrider. “I don’t care!” he cried, 
raising his voice again. “Let them hear!” But 
even as before his voice fell to the shrill whisper. 
“You are becoming intolerable—utterly intoler¬ 
able ! ’ 9 

“Look here,” broke in Boxrider again smoothly. 
“Do try to see things as they are, my dear fellow. 
Nobody is being intolerable. I have no wish to be 
offensive in any way. I think you’re a good fellow, 
Beech, only you can’t expect me to agree with you 
every time. I’m sorry if I suggested I had the right 
to send you out. I acknowledge that and apologize. 
But do try to see things in proportion. You may 
be right and I wrong about Miss Senior, but you 
know that Kingfords are grousing that we have not 
given them the service which they’ve paid for. 
Well, I know—yes, Beech, I know —that that picture 
is what is wanted.” 

“I wonder if it is only the picture.” 

For the first time Boxrider’s own voice rose. 
“What do you mean by that?” 

We are perhaps never so ready to be indignant as 
when, in a charge levelled at us, we discover some 
remote particle of truth. 

“What do I mean?” Beech attempted a strange, 
shrill chuckle. “What do I mean? Ah, I wonder 
what I do mean! ’ ’ But he would not meet the hard, 
cold eye which, as he knew, his questioner had 
turned on him. 


THE HOARDING 


145 


“Well, if you mean nothing, don’t profess to 
mean something, Beech. ... I say I want that pic¬ 
ture and I’m going to get it.” 

“Get it? You mean to persecute that girl 
further?—after I have given her an honourable as¬ 
surance that the matter is at an end?” 

“Well, yes, I’m going on with it. And its useless 
for you to talk about persecution and honourable 
assurances. I’m going on because I’ve got to go on. 
We’ve got to keep the Kingford connexion. I’m not 
going to let you lose that, I assure you. And King- 
fords want exactly what Miss Senior has to sell, and 
they’re going to get it.” 

There came to the outer office a sudden sound of 
a chair pushed back; and a moment later Beech, 
flinging open the door, strode, pale, silent, and with 
head up, through the room and so to the door. A 
moment later that door had been banged behind him. 

James, watching, winked at Bexley. 

As for Boxrider, he could only shrug shoulders. 
He meant to persist. He had got to do that. If 
he did not, not only their business would sutler but 
Kingford’s would. 

But it was absurd that Beech was so unreason¬ 
able. Of course when they had got the picture, and 
it was on all the hoardings with a little “B. & B.” 
in the corner, and congratulations and orders were 
coming in from Kingfords and other clients, and 
the income of that same B. & B. had increased hand¬ 
somely—of course, then Beech would be the first to 
rejoice. He would then be capable even of deluding 


146 


THE HOARDING 


himself, thought Boxrider, into the belief that the 
picture had always been a policy of his which had 
been advanced only over the dead body of his part¬ 
ner’s criticism. So that there could be no other 
policy than the one of buying the picture. He was 
only thinking of the interests of the firm. . . . Well, 
perhaps not only. . . . 

For that little challenge on the part of Beech still 
held its place in his mind . . . and he was not the 
man to refuse to meet a challenge. Very well then, 
he would own up. While he was quite sure that he 
was serving his own material interest and Beech’s 
too, by pressing for that canvas, he was willing to 
admit strictly to himself that if the picture had been 
the work of another person than its actual painter 
he might have been more willing to yield to the fact 
of her reiterated refusal to sell. Well, he was not 
willing to yield now, and that thought set him to 
seize paper at once. He began to write a letter 
asking for an appointment. Then he tore it up and 
took down a telegraph form. 

“Wish see you. Hope you will allow me call to¬ 
day four o’clock.—Boxrider.” 

That would do. He rang the bell, and the office 
boy who had succeeded to the duties of the Jew came 
in and took away the message. 

He had committed himself now. And it merely 
remained for him to follow up the message. Of 
course she could be out or refuse to see him. What 
was he to do then? But he had made it a rule never 
to envisage the possibility of an adverse circum- 


THE HOARDING 


147 


stance; there was the policy of a philosophy in that 
rule too. She might be out if anyone else went to 
her. He resolved suddenly that she should not be 
out when he went. 


II 

She might, as a matter of fact, very easily have 
been out, and certainly her impulse was to find an 
errand. But then she remembered she had no need 
to find one. Her dealer had written that he could 
not sell the picture of “ Flower Girls, Piccadilly 
Circus/ ’ at the price she had quoted. 

“It is worth what you ask, and some day you’ll 
get it. But you’ll have to wait or sell cheap. If 
you get fifty you’ll be lucky.” (She was recalling 
those words of his uttered during her last visit.) 
Obviously he could not sell for more than fifty. And 
really it was all rather awkward, particularly just 
now. Bills; the rent of the flat. Netta had only a 
small fixed income and could not very well advance 
more than her half of the expenses. So that it 
seemed the “Flower Girls” would have to go at 
fifty. But from that thought she drew back in re¬ 
volt. It was her best picture. If it had not occupied 
so much more space than “Waiting,” the Academy 
would not have thrown it out. But their ultimate 
decisions were a matter of the foot rule, and so 
“Waiting” was taken and the “Flower Girls, Picca¬ 
dilly Circus,” was sent home. 

Thus she had her errand. She could visit that 
wretched dealer . . . have it out with him, or go 


148 


THE HOARDING 


round visiting other dealers. It was merely imperti¬ 
nent on the part of this advertising man to trouble 
her. 

“Are you going to be in this afternoon, Netta?” 
she asked her friend suddenly at luncheon. 

Netta looked up in slow curiosity. 

“No, I don’t think I shall. I rather thought of 
doing Oxford Street and having tea at Hobson’s. 
Why ? ’ ’ 

“Oh, nothing at all!” She told herself that if 
Netta had happened to be remaining at home she 
could have left a message with her. But she had 
a sudden curious doubt that even if Netta had been 
remaining she would have given her a message. 

They could both be out. That was it. He would 
then hammer on the door unavailingly. That surely 
should convince him. 

But, now argued she, he would then only come 
back, take her unawares, perhaps at some moment 
when his coming would be disturbing and unpleas¬ 
ant. Suppose, for instance, that Claude Coleton 
should happen to be dropping in to tea and that 
that dreadful young man should select the moment 
following Coleton’s arrival for his call. . . . No, 
she would have to remain, face him out, defeat him, 
finally convince him that she was an artist and not 
a tradesman, and that she could in no circumstances 
sell work if afterwards it might be put to vulgar 
ends. 

Having decided to remain, she was immediately 
visited by doubts of another kind; but those doubts 


THE HOARDING 


149 


were so obscure that she was hardly prepared to 
consider them tolerantly. 

At three o’clock Netta yawned in her deep, softly 
cushioned chair, put down the book she affected to 
read, and turned an idle eye towards the window. 

“Oh, my dear good Lesley, why are resolutions so 
much more easily carried out when one rises from a 
dining-room chair than from one like this? I never 
took myself for a philosopher before, but really I 
think I’ll try to discover myself in that character.” 

“You don’t mean”—Lesley wished and hoped 
that she displayed no remotest suggestion of in¬ 
terest or purpose—“you don’t mean” (how slowly, 
idly the words were spun) “that you don’t think of 
going out?” 

“No, my dear. I do think of going—sometime. 
I am always going sometime. By the way, you look 
as if you ought to go out more. You are pale.” 

(Poor little Lesley!—thinking of that man who, if 
only he had had less absorbing interests, might have 
found a moment to look her way . . . and yet she, 
Netta Graeme, was not sure that even then. . . . 
He liked sophistication, experience. Poor little 
Lesley! But if these girls would delude themselves 
they must presently have some sort of awakening.) 

“You are pale. You want fresh air,” she was 
going on slowly. “I really think you should run 
round the park every morning.” 

“Battersea?” (Would Netta never get up and 

go?) 

“Oh, I don’t know! No, I think I meant Hyde. 


150 


THE HOARDING 


Though, really, I fancy you best, I think, with your 
grey eyes, among the squirrels in Regent’s Park. 
Yes, on the whole, I would send you there. Oh, dear, 
how the time goes! It’s half-past three.” (Would 
Netta never go ?) ‘ 4 Or is it my watch that is wrong ? 
The clock struck half-past ten minutes ago, I’m 
sure. ...” (Would she never go?) 

Slowly Netta stood up—at last. But she must 
dress now. She had left the room, and Lesley could 
hear her moving about in her bedroom opposite. 
(Would she never, never go?) Here she was now 
back holding out dainty shoes for her little fragile- 
looking feet. How did she contrive to make her feet 
look so fragile? 

“What dear little feet you have, Netta—they look 
as if shoes, even those silly little delicatenesses, were 
all too harsh a binding.” (Would Netta never go?) 

Netta Graeme did not blush. But her eyes were 
suddenly bright. She could so easily summon a 
memory of other lips which delivered such words. 
. . . Poor little Lesley, envious, perhaps, even jeal¬ 
ous. . . . Poor little Lesley, who really hadn’t a 
bad ankle if she would not wear such “sensible” 
shoes. 

“Yes, you’re right, dear. I don’t think the day 
is to be trusted. ...” And if she must not—that 
woman—remove these aforesaid shoes and find 
others a degree less doll-like! (Would she never 
go 1) 

But Netta Graeme was shod at last and standing 


THE HOARDING 


151 


up surveying herself in the mirror in the further 
corner of the room. 

“I think I’ll do now.” 

“Of course you’ll do,” cried Lesley eagerly. 
“You look perfect; even for you, you look perfect.” 
(Go, woman, go! Go!) 

“Yes, but I’m not quite sure about the cerise 
touch. ’ ’ 

“You couldn’t better it. If you take it away 
you’ll spoil it all.” 

“I—wonder.” But already Netta was moving 
towards the door. Somewhere from far away a 
clock was booming out four o’clock. 

“And I was going without my list.” She must 
come back to the desk and search. (Apparently she 
would never go.) 

But now she was really, as she herself said, “for 
off.” 

“Good-bye.” 

She went out of the room into the hall. Lesley 
could hear her opening the front door. And then, 
click! She had gone. She had gone . 

Lesley drew a queer, long breath. Then she 
found herself behaving absurdly. It was absurd. 
It really would have made not the slightest differ¬ 
ence if Netta had remained. What difference could 
it have made? Indeed she would have had an ally. 

Suddenly she stood up, bracing herself. 

Somebody had knocked sharply upon the outside 
door. 


152 


THE HOARDING 


III 

She approached the door with a curious subcon¬ 
sciousness of fear, as if the physical action of 
turning that latch involved obscure spiritual conse¬ 
quences. She uttered a panic condemnation of her¬ 
self for not running away to that dealer. 

Opening the door she caught a glimpse of that 
hard, smiling face (she told herself that it was 
hard), and she began, coldly, to frame a greeting. 
Then she paused, discovering something. 

“You seem to have hurt yourself since you were 
here last,” for her eye was on the two sticks. (Evi¬ 
dently, thought Boxrider, Beech hadn’t explained 
why I’d sent him.) 

“Yes, I had a spill. Like a blind horse I put my 
foot in a hole.” 

“A sprain?” Indifferently. 

“Yes, a sprain. But a sprain doesn’t prevent a 
man from doing business, Miss Senior. And so, as 
you see—as I warned you I’d do—I came along.” 

“You know, of course, what my answer will be.” 
She paused. “You had better come in though, since 
you can’t very well stand up like that for long.” 

“Oh, yes, I can!” he answered cheerfully. “Not 
but what it is pleasanter to sit down.” 

“This way,” she said, and he limpingly followed. 

She put him into the chair which Nett a had but 
just left; then, believing that she did it reluctantly, 
she gave him a stool for his foot; and then, se¬ 
dately, she leant back and spoke. 


THE HOARDING 


153 


“I thought as you said you were coming I had 
better see you. I wanted you to understand that 
when I gave you my decision I meant it. I would 
not like to see my work on the walls-” 

4 ‘ Then you put yourself above the greatest artists 
of these and other times ?” 

“No, I don’t. That is absurd. But great artists 
do not sell their work for purposes of that kind.” 

“Don’t they? What about Millais? You put 
yourself above Millais. Don’t you remember 
‘Bubbles’? And, look here, I’m not an artist, but 
I’ve picked up some ideas about art—and people. 
It’s pretty useful if you can pick up ideas about 
both. Then you can begin to realize that perhaps 
Millais did the biggest thing in his life by letting a 
painting of his go on to the walls—not of the Acad¬ 
emy, where a few bored upper-middle-class women 
with no notion of any art, least of all of the art of 
life, would see it—but on the walls of London and 
Manchester streets. And Millais doesn’t stand 
alone. If you studied the hoardings in these streets, 
if you looked at the names in the corners of the 
advertisement pictures, you’d see names you knew, 
bigger names—if you’ll not misunderstand my put¬ 
ting it like this—bigger names than your own, peo¬ 
ple who are on the line at the Academy at this 
moment. ’ ’ 

“I—I don’t remember ever seeing any.” 

That reply slipped from her before she realized 
its profound significance to the general situation in 
which those two sat involved. But almost at once 



154 


THE HOARDING 


she knew—she recognized that in its form her an¬ 
swer was a temporizing. And with a curious little 
intaking of breath she knew that he had recognized 
it for just that. 

“No. You don’t remember seeing any. But 
you will, I am sure, take my word for it for the mo¬ 
ment. And yet-” suddenly that idea came to 

him: that idea to which he looked back afterwards 
as to an inspiration—“and yet, look here, Miss 
Senior, I don’t ask you to agree. I shall not con¬ 
sider that you are conceding anything. But will you 
come to no final decision until I have had an oppor¬ 
tunity of proving to you that artists of what you’d 
call the most respectable achievement have used the 
walls—splashed the colour about to help the sales of 
tea and cocoa and to bring new visitors to the sea¬ 
side. Will you hold your decision till then?” 

Now the obvious answer had been “My decision? 
I thought I’d given my decision.” That was indeed 
the answer forming, as it were, in the foreground of 
her mind. Her sense of the infinite mystery of the 
human ego—her own ego—became from this moment 
acute. Two distinct impulses seemed to move her, 
and that obvious answer did not pass her lips. 

“If I agree to hold my decision, as you call it, is it 
understood that when I do deliver my decision it is 
accepted without further—further ” 

“Argument? Yes, I agree.” He did not exhibit 
his triumph; he had been too long at the game, as 
he would have said. His attitude was submissive; 
he preserved an air rather of consciousness of hav- 




THE HOARDING 


155 


ing yielded far more than he had originally pro¬ 
posed to do. But actually each was perfectly aware 
not only that a concession had been made, but that 
in the other a recognition existed that a concession 
had been made. “I know—and I know that you 
know . 9 9 

Her intelligence was doubtless at the moment 
actively engaged in trying to discover how she had 
come to deliver an answer so different from the one 
she had framed ready to be given out. But his was 
active with something else: his was a highly origi¬ 
nating mind at all times, I suppose! 

Well, he made his further proposal. 

‘ 1 Look here. If you’re to see those pictures—be¬ 
gin to get a conviction—you can’t begin too soon, 
can you?” 

“What do you want me to do? Get a list from 
you showing where to find these wonderful exhibits, 
and then go round laboriously viewing them?” 

“Yes and no. There’s my taxi outside. It’s 
there at this minute—or it should be. I told the 
chap to wait. Well, come with me now, and I’ll 
show you. We can drive round right away.” 

“But—but-” she was beginning. She plunged 

wildly. “Your foot. You oughtn’t-” (Why 

didn’t she decline a proposal as preposterous as it 
was insidious? But she gave up trying to under¬ 
stand herself to-day.) 

“My foot? I’m not going to walk. I’m going to 
ride, as the Americans would say. And when I get 
to the place where the picture is I’m going to use my 




156 


THE HOARDING 


eyes —not my toe, even if there are pictures I’d like 
to put my foot through!” 

“I don’t know whether-” 

“Oh, come along!” He stood up, speaking at the 
same time with a certain swift authority that had 
won him victories before. 

For a moment she hesitated. Then, “Well, since 
I’ve promised to see these wonderful wall-displays, 
I may as well get it over, I dare say.” 

“Yes”—he hutted up his head—“yes, I think so.” 

In her room, putting on her hat, she had a moment 
of leisure to marvel and—repent. But she contin¬ 
ued to put on her hat. Every moment of that brief 
pause had afterwards for her some character of the 
astonishing. For every moment was surely implicit 
with possibilities of withdrawal, and still she went 
on with that business of affixing pins, sliding into a 
coat, putting on shoes . . . and, well, there was a 
pause now while she considered herself with a care 
that she recognized as singular in the mirror. . . . 
She looked down at her feet remembering Netta’s 
. . . yes, she was curious and anxious . . . and 
really, if the truth be confessed, ready to make an 
impression. 

And at last she went to join him again. He had 
got up, she found, and conveyed himself almost to 
the door (conceivably thinking she might change her 
mind if she had time to sit down again and fur¬ 
ther argue). She was in upon him—almost in his 
arms—ere she discovered where he stood. 



THE HOARDING 


157 


She shot back. “I thought you were over on that 
chair.’’ This, breathless. 

“No, I was ready, you see—ready for you.” 

She looked at him curiously, critically; for the 
first time perhaps with that precision. “I should 
think you’d always be ready for people.” That, 
surely, was a looking into something personal in 
him, an unnecessary and therefore—if he wanted it 
—a to-be-welcomed curiosity. He felt himself subtly 
individualized. Perhaps she realized suddenly that 
it was in such terms that he might see the attention 
she had paid him. She hurried back into the imper¬ 
sonal before he could answer. 

“I suppose being ready is part of the attention w r e 
have learnt to look for in men. We’ve been spoilt.” 
(“Being ready,” as if she had meant the thing in 
that sense when first she had spoken of it.) He 
merely smiled and nodded, keeping perhaps some 
part of a secret—the secret of how he had inter¬ 
preted the more vivid and spontaneous of her words. 

“And now we’re off, I suppose,” he said. He 
made a step towards the door to hold it for her and 
she saw him wince. 

“You must go first, please.” 

“/’m all right.” 

“Please. Your foot.” He supposed every woman 
could sentimentalize over matters of that kind. He 
was, vaguely, annoyed. That over-robust intelli¬ 
gence of his demanded, he imagined, even in his re¬ 
lations with a woman, something with a quality of 


158 


THE HOARDING 


hardness. For what could be called the minor ten¬ 
dernesses there did not seem to be any very obvious 
place. Sympathy was good, tenderness, yes; but 
not sympathy for a mere passing and trivial afflic¬ 
tion. There was nothing heroic in a sprained ankle 
—nothing heroic even in the endurance of it. . . . 
But it was not the essential triviality of the affliction 
which made him brush aside her sympathy; he was 
acute enough to envisage a future in which her prej¬ 
udices underwent some process of correction—the 
correction of these earlier thoughts, that tranquillity 
in which emotion was to be recollected; well, when 
that time did come she would find herself remember¬ 
ing tenderness to him for a lameness which in the 
meantime had passed. . . . She would feel herself a 
little—what was it?—foolish, as one does feel one¬ 
self when stricken with a sense of over-emphasis. 

Half-comprehending his attitude, she yielded, and 
for the rest of the afternoon she agreed to ignore his 
foot. She let him struggle down the steps and enter 
the cab unhelped after he had assisted her within. 
Then, giving an address to the driver, he came in 
and sank into the place at her side. 

For a young man there is of course mysterious 
and overwhelming sense of intimacy to be got from 
sitting beside a woman in the padded softness of a 
closed vehicle. The fact of sex becomes vivid, all¬ 
dominant. Rhythm—vibration—attraction, what is 
the secret that links them? For Boxrider the ex¬ 
perience was so new that it broke upon him sud¬ 
denly now in a swift wave of experience. He felt 


THE HOARDING 


159 


extraordinarily and specially aware of her now, 
though he had expected something. All his ideas, 
however, had been empirical: a woman—for that 
matter, this woman—when you got her close must 
present you with some kind of experience, special¬ 
ized, poignant, even what was called thrilling. 

Each was profoundly stirred by that contact. 
The sharpness of those first exchanges gave a curi¬ 
ous and rather fearful impression of reaction to 
some prodigious expenditure of spiritual energy. 
There they sat, each drawing a breath, waiting— 
waiting for some enlightenment as to the proper 
dealing with a situation of extraordinary novelty 
and consequence. He wanted in speaking to strike 
a note; she was half-conscious of some impulse to 
deflect what she dimly conceived his intention. She 
told herself that she did not like this man, but that 
she liked adventure; and, liking adventure, she had 
let herself be involved so far, and that now she 
would have to be careful. As for the man himself— 
when he spoke he knew not if he said the thing he 
intended. 

“What a good thing it is that you’re a business 
woman.’ ’ 

“Business?” She could remember, oddly enough, 
at that moment another man who would not have 
praised her for that grace. “Business? Oh, yes, 
I’m a business woman! I have to be. I have to 
sell my work.” 

He laughed. “I’d like to sell it for you.” 

“Oh, I can do quite well in my own small way, 


160 


THE HOARDING 


Mr. Boxrider! At least-” She paused, remem¬ 

bering the 44 Flower Girls, Piccadilly Circus”; she 
had not sold that, and she would have to do some¬ 
thing soon. Have to- (Netta had asked her 

something only that morning: 44 What about the 
rates? I’ve just found we haven’t paid them.”) 
44 At least,” she was going on with a tiny flush, 44 I 
generally do pretty well. Sometimes the buying 
people are a bit-” 

44 Market a bit sticky,” he suggested. 44 Yes, 
markets are. And, as a matter of mere common 
sense, when the market is sticky, sellers don’t— 
don’t-” He broke off now. She looked at him. 

44 Yes?” 

44 Oh, nothing!” 

4 4 You mean—I think you mean-” 

44 Well, yes, I did mean that. Sellers don’t refuse 
good offers when they do get them.” 

44 Why didn’t you say it at once?” 

4 4 Oh, well, for once I suppose I had an impulse— 
to, well, not to press-” 

44 I shall really begin now to think of you as less 
strictly a business man, Mr. Boxrider, than I origi¬ 
nally imagined!” 

He considered. He was not sure that he wanted 
to be denied the acknowledgment of his own empha¬ 
sis. He wanted her to think of him, she should think 
of him, in that way. 

44 I hope I am always a business man,” he said. 
44 It’s a man’s job to be always—whatever he is!” 

She looked at him, amused at the egotism. It was 








THE HOARDING 


161 


the only kind of egotism she could permit in him 
without injury to a certain conception. 

But presently he had his head out of the window 
and was calling to the driver to stop. They were 
afloat beside that immense island wilderness, and 
there, before them, rose that same giant hoarding 
lifting its head towards the heavens. And upon its 
vast face sprawled great splashes of colour, enor¬ 
mous legends, tales in line, history in wash, and 
truths (or half truths) in rotundities of phrase and 
picture. 

‘‘If you see it in ‘Tosh —it is so.’ 99 

“ ‘ Tranquillity’ underwear puts a real sheep on 
your back,” and so on. 

“Do you see?” he said. “Look at that sheep! 
You’d say it’s only an advertisement sheep. Whose 
name is on it though? Where else will you see that 
man’s work? Whose name? Isn’t it Rivers? Claude 
Rivers, A.R.A.” 

He quoted the honorific letters with the unction 
that men who have not been at a university quote the 
degrees of their friends. “And do you see that pic¬ 
ture up there of the ‘Court Fountain Pen?’ That 
fountain playing in the courtyard now? It’s good 
work, isn’t it?” 

“ Y—yes.” 

“All the same, I wonder if you recognize the 

man’s manner.” 

“Vaguely,” she began to admit. 

“Oh, well then presently you’ll know it for work 
from the same hand as painted the picture alongside 


162 


THE HOARDING 


your ‘Waiting’ in Burlington House! And finally, 
look at the big picture of that woman with ‘Rose’s 
Soap.’ That woman is a portrait. By whom? Not 
by one of your chocolate box folk, who do get into 
the Academy when all’s said and done. It’s—it’s 
by Granton— the Granton—the man you’d acknowl¬ 
edge to stand at the tip-top, wouldn’t you?” He 
made no pretence to use the argot of the art world. 

“Well, I don’t profess to uphold his methods—all 
of them.” 

“Hedging, Miss Senior. Hedging.” 

She laughed. 

“Perhaps. Yes, I’ll admit that Mr. Granton does 
mean something to me—as to others of my genera¬ 
tion. Whether he will mean as much to the 
next-” 

“Oh, bother the next generation! He’s ready to 
advertise soap to this generation; and if he will 
advertise soap, why on earth shouldn’t you advertise 
cocoa?” 

‘ ‘ Because—why, because-” But now she found 

herself hesitating. The answer had seemed so sim¬ 
ple. But somehow when she wanted words they 
would not come. She was even aware of a strange 
emotion of panic and of that accompanying emotion 
—fear of the emotion of panic and of its possible 
effects. 

He presently saw that he had gained some small 
ground, for he went on, “No, Miss Senior, you can 
think of no reason why, if Granton is for soap, you 




THE HOARDING 


163 


shouldn’t be for cocoa! No reason, except this ut¬ 
terly weak and trivial reason that Granton breaks 
with some tradition of the Past and that you are 
being asked to do the same. What is the use of the 
Past? It’s dead, and what’s the good of dead things? 
You don’t stick to the stage-coach.” 

“All the same the coach may be a more dignified 
means of progression.” 

“No, I deny that. But”—he had put his head out 
and told the driver to move on a few yards so that 
a further span of the hoarding should come before 
her eyes—“there are some other things I want you 
to see,” he explained. She looked at him with a 
sudden suspicion. Was it possible that this visit was 
being prolonged by his design? She pushed the idea 
aside. But in doing so she discovered in herself the 
dark suggestion that it was not merely the truth she 
coveted but the action which presumably would be 
necessary—she taking the line she did—following on 
the establishment and acknowledgment of the truth. 

‘ 6 Aren’t we taking a long time ? ’ ’ she began feebly. 

“There are these other pictures I want you to 
see,” he persisted. She tried to look out, for the 
cab had stopped, but he leant forward as if she 
should look only when he chose, and as if, in the 
meantime, she should listen. 

“Look here,” he said. “I want to say this. Do 
judge a matter on its merits, Miss Senior. My 
proposition has its merits. And not only financial 
ones—though there are those. I’ll pay you down on 


164 


THE HOARDING 


behalf of Kingfords—we said sixty. But I ? 11 pay 
you down—I’m justified in doing it and I will —a 
hundred! ’ ’ 

She felt a new excitement, and a new weakening. 
For she was now being offered a means of saving her 
4 ‘Flower Girls, Piccadilly Circus,” and holding it 
for the future. 

But an odd impulse made her speak, protest. 

“No, we said sixty. That was agreed. If I sold, 
I’d sell-” But looking at him she couldn’t dis¬ 

cover that there was in his mind what she had feared. 
If he was strictly, in relation to her, a business 
man- 

“Look here, Miss Senior, let me go on. Another 
merit is this. You are really enriching the minds of 
the people about you if you give them art to look 
at—Truth, Beauty—instead of vulgarly conceived, 
inartistic and stupid daubs. Is that nothing? Does 
your art so much belong to yourself? And by means 
of this art which you lend, if you like to put it so, to 
Commerce, you increase the trade of the world, you 
bring nations nearer and—you respond to the sense 
of the times in which you live. See?” 

Suddenly he leant back so that she could get a 
clear view of this new aspect of the hoarding. Look¬ 
ing up she saw a fine, swiftly impressionistic paint¬ 
ing of a dark Scottish valley. High around were 
packed the black hills, upon the face of which, in one 
corner, ran swiftly the narrow single silver of a 
stream. The observer was caught by this vision 
amidst the rather squalid bustle, the little, hurried 




THE HOARDING 


165 


endeavours of these crowds going by; looking up, ere 
he read the brief legend, he might feel himself re¬ 
moved to some atmosphere of splendour and lone¬ 
liness—perhaps to a place dark with more than 
rumours of physical things, so that there came to him 
with a thrill the word when now he read it—“ Glen¬ 
coe.’ ’ 

The artist. Yes, that was the artist; and below— 
“Via G.N.R.”—the tradesman. That would be her 
thought, he supposed. But he waited in silence. He 
saw that she drew a long breath. 

“Don’t you see,” he began at last to speak in a 
low murmur, 4 ‘ that that picture is bringing into the 
lives of the people some of the colour and wonder 
and mystery of those places too far for them to visit? 
Doesn’t it help you?” 

“Yes, I suppose—I think—it does. But my pic¬ 
ture isn’t-” 

“No, perhaps it doesn’t perform precisely the 
same service, but it is going to help.” 

“Perhaps—perhaps you are right.” 

“Then”—he did not press—“you’ll let us have 
this one picture? I agree that you are not creating 
a precedent or that we are to expect you neces¬ 
sarily to go in for work of this kind as a general 
policy.” That was a sufficiently cunning touch. It 
did not assume her general surrender; it merely 
ascribed to her an experimental concession. It al¬ 
lowed her to remain conscious of her own immense 
strength of purpose. (“I’m so sure of myself that 
I don’t at all mind letting you use one of my pictures. 



166 


THE HOARDING 


By that means I shall prove to you and to myself 
that my work, when it appears on the hoardings of 
the country, is merely something commercial, or 
primarily commercial, and that it has no intellectual 
or spiritual influence whatever.” How that was to 
be proved did not appear.) 

She was sufficiently under the domination of that 
idea of his now to allow herself to act in the rather 
absurd situation which he had created. 

“ Perhaps on those terms, and with that under¬ 
standing, I will agree to let you have the picture. 
But strictly on the understanding that I haven’t 
made a precedent.” 

“Thank you. I’m very glad. And I agree.” He 
held out his hand, waiting. He had half to turn to 
get his hand out, and now he could command a view 
of her excited face. His hand still waited. “ Usual 
way, ’ ’ he said shortly. ‘ ‘ Closing a deal. ’ ’ Her long, 
lean fingers met his. A moment later she wondered 
if men, in giving their hand to a bargain, did so with 
such slow emphasis. What a cool, hard hand—so 
different from the soft flesh of the polished Coleton, 
or—yes!—from the twitchy hot hand of that man 
Beech—that partner of this young man sitting beside 
her. . . . 

She wondered. If she had a suspicion she was not 
in the mood to examine suspicions. She was excited; 
she had a curious sense of being involved in much 
more than in this odd contract to sell a picture; she 
had a profound impression of some reality in her life 
which had not been present until now—as if this 


THE HOARDING 


167 


crudely expressed fact was something immensely 
relevant to the entire future. 

She drew away her hand swiftly with a little flush. 
That man ... he was a man. He had not held her 
hand as a man held the hand of the man with whom 
he had struck a bargain. Yet she could discover 
nothing in his eyes, when she tried to look at him, to 
encourage that idea. . . . Oh, bother these ideas, 
suspicions! . . . And there was something she must 
say: 

“The price is sixty.’’ 

“I offered a hundred. I’ll pay that.” 

“No,” she was beginning when she found herself 
involved in a new dilemma. If she refused his higher 
offer—sprung, as such offers should be sprung, in 
the moment of pause in which a market was being 
prepared, in the hesitation which preceded the clos¬ 
ing with an offer, in the second in which is born the 
“ready seller”—if she refused, she more or less 
acknowledged an extra-business element in their 
relationship. If she accepted, on the other hand, she 
would still not merely not escape consciousness that 
there was, in fact, such an extra-business element: 
she would emphasize the consciousness of it in her 
own mind! Feminine like, she decided on evasion. 

“Isn’t that the Strand Underground opposite? 
Then, having done our business, I’ll take the train 
back. Yes. Please . You can use your cab to go 
home.” 

She insisted, and had the really pleasurable sensa¬ 
tion of conquering—if only in some narrower corner 


168 


THE HOARDING 


of the field. Before he could say a further word she 
was in the street looking back in upon him. Really 
she had done that adroitly. 

‘‘I’ll forward your cheque to-night,’’ he said. (He 
was fighting hard for some further room in which 
to manoeuvre.) “Will you instruct the Academy to 
deliver when the Show ends? And then there will 
be the pulls of the prints for you to see. I’ll bring 
them along or arrange for you to see them.” 

She found that when he was actually speaking she 
could make very little protest. She realized, if im¬ 
perfectly, that he was announcing his intention to 
close with her at once to prevent a change of mind 
(although ultimately he would certainly remind her 
that he had had her hand on the bargain, and that 
therefore there could be no honourable retreat). But 
he was telling her also that there would be further 
meetings. Well, if further meetings should be the 
outcome of business . . . she suddenly refused to 
consider her feelings in this matter. 

Her mind had reached this point of refusal from 
that further point at which it had stood when he 
began to speak, in a flash rather than by a progres¬ 
sion of ideas, so that all her thoughts were fused. 
Some part of her—her tongue probably—was calling 
“Good-bye”; another part of her—her legs conceiv¬ 
ably—was hurrying her physical entity towards the 
depths of subterranean London. But certainly an¬ 
other part of her still hovered between his unstarted 
cab and that wall where a remote Scottish glen, 


THE HOARDING 


169 


troubled only with its past, looked into the face of 
a London troubled with a very present. 

She still thought, with a fearful and absorbing 
excitement, of this climax. She was, indeed, so im¬ 
mensely impressed by the character of the encounter 
with this man, so vividly conscious of some potential 
thing hidden in the affair, that she was almost in¬ 
capable of these necessary commonplaces of speech 
by which alone she could get for herself a right to 
plunge below and find her train. She discovered 
herself staring into the pigeon-hole of the booking- 
office as if the booking-clerk had just called her by 
name from a deep sleep. 

“He thinks I take drugs,” was the first idea that 
now came to her, as her eye met that of the mild 
young man pushing out her ticket; but with her mind 
forced down to this level it seemed willing to per¬ 
form its ordinary service. She got into her train. 
But almost at once in that strange, exiguous, tubu- 
lared universe in which the passage north from the 
Strand is involved, that area of alternating dark¬ 
nesses and false dawns, in which low white walls 
are seen splashed by advertisements, she became 
conscious again only of the one thing those adver¬ 
tisements suggested. Or rather of the one personal¬ 
ity. For she could still feel the impress of that man 
—feel it without being conscious of the character of 
the feeling—whether it was a grateful feeling or 
something much else. In a sense, so great had been 
the impact of his character and idea upon her that 


170 


THE HOARDING 


she was stunned; she groped, she found herself oc¬ 
cupied with a sort of impersonal conception of him 
as of a force signifying that thing for which he stood. 

But surveying, with her mind thus dominated by 
his idea, those fleeting appeals in colour to the public 
passing here below, she was made aware again of 
his apologia. . . . These advertisements . . . the peo¬ 
ple’s gallery ... the great modern weapon of a world 
commerce—a world commerce that drew the people. 
She sat there while the train rolled on through its 
narrow burrow, and only with a start did she 
presently discover that she had reached her own 
station. 


CHAPTER X 


I 

Claude Coleton leant back in the deep chair in 
that corner of the library at the Grecian Club in St. 
James’s Street which had come to be recognized as 
his. Coleton, said a carefully fostered tradition, 
must have privacy from the oppressions of Popu¬ 
larity; and in that corner he had sought it, found 
it, and, so far, kept it. Let him go on keeping it. 
So well understood was the tradition that you only 
advanced upon him if his eye seemed to give permis¬ 
sion; otherwise you faded into the shadows in the 
doorway. 

Two suppliants came, gazed, and being not en¬ 
couraged to share a seat upon the throne, moved 
away, obeisance in their attitude. Presently a third 
figure, elongated, deferential, placed itself within the 
orbit of the eye of the personage (by some means 
Coleton had got himself elevated to that rank), and 
a moment later Coleton, recognizing that, this time, 
it was the secretary of the club who wanted him, 
nodded amiably. 

‘ i Good morning, Mr. Abercrombie.” 

With eagerness and with some slight conscious¬ 
ness of the fact that he was a stipendiary, and there¬ 
fore, in a sense, in the club’s pay, and if in the club’s 

171 


172 


THE HOARDING 


then more especially in that of this one of its more 
considerable members, Abercrombie advanced. 

“Good morning, Mr. Coleton. Good morning. I 
really wanted to ask you”—(I believe in a recent 
novel of Coleton’s, Abercrombie, with his “I really 
wanted to ask you, ’’ figures ludicrously. There can 
be no doubt that this nervous and slightly absurd 
individual lived in fear of a distinction which had 
already been conferred upon a number of persons 
not associated with the club.)—“I really wanted to 
ask you whether you’d be willing to join the library 
committee. We feel that we should greatly value 
your advice and assistance. We’d like you to be 
chairman of the committee if you joined it.” 

Coleton shook his head slowly and smilingly. 

“No, no, Abercrombie. I make it a rule to decline 
all honours. All. You must not even nominate me. 
You must not really. I realize, of course, that it is 
an honour—a great honour. I think you told me once 
that Macaulay held the position when he was a mem¬ 
ber. I must decline, however, I really must. Though 
it is so good of you.” 

“I am sorry to hear you say that, Mr. Coleton. 
We rather counted on winning your consent. Your 
place in the club is so important, if I may say it. 
Are you sure that you will not consent?” 

“No, no, Abercrombie! You mustn’t exert that 
persuasive tongue of yours or you may merely un¬ 
settle me. I have long made it a rule to avoid even 
the smallest kind of publicity. Yes, that’s final. Why 
not ask Mr. Lampson? He’d do it admirably.” 


THE HOARDING 


173 


And presently the secretary slid away. Later, in 
twittering accents, he was informing Lampson him¬ 
self. (Yes, Sir Henry Lampson, Bart., now.) The 
Lampson newspapers are not unknown. A sort of 
touch with literature therefore; and therefore a kind 
of presumptive right to seats on library committees. 
At this time, however, speaking in terms of clubland, 
or in terms at least of such a quarter of clubland as 
was inhabited by members of the Grecian, Lampson 
had still his position to establish. He was not well 
recognized here; when still a candidate he had even 
had a fear as the time of election approached, of 
being pilled. Indeed, it was said that if a certain 
committee man had not had a toss in the hunting- 
field he would have been pilled. Well, if by reason 
of his association with letters, he could climb on to 
that library committee he would find himself in touch 
with people such as Gilbert Bostock and other men 
of that sort. The fact accounted, he supposed, for 
their acceptance of that man Coleton and for their 
elevation of the same person. Coleton’s success in 
that quarter had puzzled Lampson. But Bostock and 
his friends were not merely eminent intellectually. 
They counted for much in the great world. You met 
them—everywhere. They could so shape things if 
they chose that you, too, could presently be met 
everywhere. They had helped some men—Coleton, 
for instance. A very useful club. 

And as for Bostock and the others, he had now 
met them round a table frequently and with a kind 
of intimacy. So far so good. But while he had 


174 


THE HOARDING 


never had a hope of such a thing till twittering Aber¬ 
crombie had come to him with Coleton’s hints, he 
soon discovered that his name had begun to be can¬ 
vassed. And in a week he found himself definitely 
a candidate with Coleton as proposer; and a fort¬ 
night later, for the first time, he took his place on 
the committee, where to his further astonishment he 
found himself presently elected chairman. 

Now, Lampson was not an ungrateful soul. He 
did not consult Coleton or give him a hint of his 
purpose; but certainly about this time Lampson’s 
popular evening paper—the “Night Bird”—inserted 
a two-column review of the “Dream in the Desert,” 
which sent that somewhat exotic work through five 
new editions. 

And the gratitude did not end with that particular 
expression of it. At this time the 4 ‘Night Bird” 
was publishing that series of “characters” of the 
celebrated which later became notorious in book 
form as “Through Another Looking-glass.” In the 
“Night Bird” an article in the series was printed 
every Wednesday night. At the foot of the article 
appeared the name of the subject of the next. 
“Henry Kipple, the Bard of Empire,” you would 
read one week, and at the foot of the column rich 
promise of another revelation: “Next week Sebas¬ 
tian Grooge.” 

Now the week in which Abercrombie had had a 
new name given to him for nomination for the li¬ 
brary committee at the Grecian Club, the “Night 


THE HOARDING 


175 


Bird” dealt with Granton, the artist: the great Gran- 
ton. And the eager reader perusing the (more or 
less) authentic record of that distinguished colour¬ 
ist’s life-story and presently reaching a conclusion, 
read, ‘ 4 Next week a character sketch, interview, and 
study will appear in this column on Mr. Claude Cole- 
ton.” 

But when the article did appear, the reader dis¬ 
covered it was no interview—whatever else it was. 
And he read this further note: “We regret to have 
failed in our endeavour to induce Mr. Coleton to 
submit to personal treatment. Mr. Coleton’s dislike 
of being interviewed is well known, and he only con¬ 
sented to the appearance of this article at all on the 
strict condition that it related only to his work and 
to a study of his personality as revealed in and 
through that work.” 

Nothing in the whole series of sketches attracted 
such attention as the explanatory paragraph at¬ 
tached to this particular article. The “Morning” 
came out with a leaderette on the notable refusal 
of a popular writer to allow himself and his work 
to he vulgarized by means, etc. ... A review de¬ 
voted a special middle to the same theme; it was so 
charmed, indeed, by that hitherto unsuspected mod¬ 
esty that from that moment it dropped the slightly 
depreciatory attitude with which hitherto it had re¬ 
garded the writer’s work; while a popular literary 
weekly filled five columns on ‘ ‘ Reticence and Literary 
Reputation,” in which it not only exalted the ex- 


176 


THE HOARDING 


ample of Coleton, but expressed the hope that his 
readers would see that his sales did not suffer too 
severely through his refusal to advertise himself. 

And apparently his readers answered redoubtably, 
for I believe that his sales did not suffer. 

II 

I have merely traced one small modest action, one 
refusal to take an offered distinction, to its—shall 
we say?—undiscerned issue. It would really seem 
as if the unfortunate person who declines Publicity 
has it thrust upon him, as if to run from the world 
is but to follow a path into the arms of the world! 

But to come back—there was Coleton sitting in his 
corner (“Coleton’s Corner” it was really becom¬ 
ing), having just spoken that refusal of honour. 
Abercrombie disposed of, he could have leisure for 
a little thought. There was really a good deal to 
think about. He was not, indeed, without a certain 
alarm respecting himself. He had always been able 
to hold himself in such perfect control. Women. 
. . . Yes, he had known women. ... It was even 
conceivably true that in his very callowest youth. 
. . . But not for years had there been that curious 
impatience within himself with the restraints he had 
sought to impose. Why, was he not merely stultify¬ 
ing himself in an important respect if he so lost 
control, if he allowed his attention to stray from the 
general to the particular? The general? His busi¬ 
ness was, yes, with the general. Did not all women 


THE HOARDING 


177 


find him adorable ? They gravitated to him; he was 
a secular priest of the closet: he heard confessions. 
Was not that the service he rendered to his genera¬ 
tion! He warmed boudoirs with a delicate warmth 
of sensibility no less indubitably than an electric 
contrivance projects a merely physical heat. And 
he was—or he had hoped so—as perfectly under con¬ 
trol as the radiator. He had allowed no woman to 
have cause for jealousy of these other women—or 
he flattered himself that he had not. Each was al¬ 
lowed to believe that she had a significance which 
he missed in the others. He had told each about the 
others with a careful and quiet detachment; he told 
every woman of all the others with that special, 
qualifying detachment; and he thus entirely dis¬ 
counted serious jealousy. The individual believed 
that he had been forced to know these other women 
in order to get variety in the feminine types of his 
novels—those feminine types on which he was under¬ 
stood to rest his claim upon the future. 

By the exercise of this perfect detachment he had 
been able to serve the women of his time. He knew 
how his refusal of the more easily won popularities 
had aided his influence. They saw him as the pre¬ 
server of an ideal in an age when idealisms were, 
as one frankly blatant contemporary had put it, “too 
expensive.’’ They believed that, in the phrase of the 
time, “he went everywhere.” They knew that his 
books were to be seen everywhere, that his newest 
book was the staple of talk in every drawing-room 
into which they ever entered. And, knowing these 


178 


THE HOARDING 


things, for each of these women was there the superb 
compliment that this man among men, this Byronic 
figure without the coarser elements of its prototype, 
allowed himself to be known to, and of, themselves. 
He had laboured to preserve a real equipoise in his 
relations with them . . . and now? 

Now he saw danger—danger to much that was 
important: perhaps to everything. Strive as he 
might, he could not always now maintain that com¬ 
plete, that admirable, that necessary detachment, 
that reserve on which his social success was built. 
That girl would invade! 

She profoundly affected, and in one, not wholly 
obscure, sense irritated him. She seemed to set at 
defiance all his conceptions of the place and char¬ 
acter of women either in relation to himself or to the 
world. They must need; they must depend. He was 
uncertain of her need; he was sure of her inde¬ 
pendence. But whatever she was or was not, her 
figure moved about in the foreground of his mind. 
He had been stirred by an impulse (that fact in itself 
was symptomatic—symptomatic of something dan¬ 
gerous). 

He was stirred now by that same impulse—an 
impulse to find that girl, to ignore what would be 
called the possibilities; to care nothing for, even to 
defy, the possibilities—even to envisage them, to 
welcome them, to embrace them. For he had a 
curious conviction that yielding to that impulse 
would be the first step of a series; it would no longer 
be a detached action, as hitherto his encounters with 



THE HOARDING 


179 


her had been—even his contrived encounters, if in¬ 
deed he had ever allowed himself to contrive any 
(though now he came to think of them, to review 
them, they had been fortuitous merely—a meeting 
at the Women’s Reform Club, a meeting at the 
Academy). But a meeting with her now would be 
something immensely significant; it might very well 
re-shape his life—even disturb the character of his 
psychology. He had a profound, grim sense as of 
one deliberately stepping Fatewards, involving him¬ 
self in obscure consequences, ultimately perhaps 
splendid, but in the meantime indubitably serious. 
By going he dared a revolution in himself. 

He began to be aware of a sense which earlier in 
life he had experienced—a sense of adventure. This 
was of all things the most to be dreaded by one 
desiring to preserve an equipoise. But the effort to 
impose restraints on his imagination only seemed to 
encourage those rebellious impulses. 

He was in motion before he realized it, walking 
into the hall, and so to the street, with an abstraction 
which made him miss certain eyes bestowed on him. 
In Piccadilly he found a deep haze which made 
magic of the distance. Presently he paused at 
Dunch’s, the booksellers, and went in; as he did so 
an assistant signalled to some remoter corner of the 
shop, and a florid little man in middle life, wearing 
a tail coat, and a grey silk tie pushed through a ring, 
came forward blandly. 

“Good morning, Mr. Coleton. Good morning.’’ 

Coleton nodded amiably; he was definitely con- 


180 


THE HOARDING 


scious of bestowing, of condescending. “Good morn¬ 
ing. Anything new, Mr. Bunch?” 

“Well, no. I gave a repeat though for your last 
only yesterday. Doing well; really well.” 

“Ah, yes! Good! It reminds me of that story 
told of Hazlitt.” And he began to tell it. 

“Lamb, Mr. Coleton, wasn’t it?” suggested the 
bookseller. For a moment on Coleton’s brow ap¬ 
peared that small pucker. He did not choose to be 
corrected by a mere tradesman. But then his brow 
cleared. The tradesman was a bookseller. He made 
it his business to know booksellers. He sought them 
out, conveyed to them a sense of his kinship with 
them. “We are the two ends of a great traffic—the 
traffic in ideas. Let us forget the middlemen—pub¬ 
lishers, printers, advertisers, reviewers—let us join 
hands . 9 9 

The way to get at a bookseller was, he found, or 
believed he had found, to have some ideas on a book 
not definitely in his own department, or in anecdotes 
of the past. With these he could begin exchanges. 
The idea that a bookseller was not necessarily his 
intellectual inferior, or that the man behind the 
counter could have as vivid a sense of the value not 
only of a book but of a personality, would have 
seemed to him something in the nature of an in¬ 
decency. 

Coleton moved on along Piccadilly eastward, 
through the summer haze. He had no expectation 
of seeing Lesley, but he had a whim to walk into 
Burlington House. He went up the wide staircase, 


THE HOARDING 


181 


and reaching Room XI lie sat down. The exercise 
involved in reaching this place had made him w T arm, 
but as a refnge from the Angnst heat of the pave¬ 
ment the room had its value. 

Settling himself, he gazed up at Lesley’s canvas, 
“Waiting.” He knew something of pictures, had 
dabbled indeed in art, and had even, as a younger 
man, written an imposingly informed monograph on 
the Umbrian School for a popular series. The tech¬ 
nical skill of Lesley’s work w T as not lost upon him; 
but certainly it gave him no pleasure to observe. 

On the other hand, he had the pleasant reflection 
not only that she had refused to sell the picture for 
vulgar commercial purposes, but that she had re¬ 
fused, as he was easily able to convince himself, be¬ 
cause of himself. He had by now reached a stage 
in the development of his “interest” in her (his own 
mental phrase) at which he allowed himself to 
separate her entirely from all other women, and in 
a sense to acknowledge that in thinking of her he 
did so as other men would do when in love with a 
woman. (He did not yet permit the idea that he 
w^as in love—such an admission would be too de¬ 
structive of such elaborately constructed outworks.) 

Sitting there observing the picture, and remem¬ 
bering that she had refused to sell, a new idea arose. 
It was excellent that she had not sold, since, by not 
selling, she stood in the way of her own economic 
independence. But if she had not sold she presum¬ 
ably would presently sell to a dealer. She had men¬ 
tioned a dealer, evidently a Jew of a fellow. He 


182 


THE HOARDING 


wished she had asked him to deal with the man. 
Because then she would not feel independent. The 
greater price which he would extort would be due to 
the projection of his forceful and masculine per¬ 
sonality! “Of course, I can’t get prices like that. I 
owe everything to you.” 

Doubtless she was a good deal disappointed that 
her picture had not been bought on its merits as a 
work of art by somebody who would buy it for his 
own walls. She had doubtless dreamed of that hap¬ 
pening, perhaps thought of what she would do with 
the money, and so on. Now she would sell it cheap 
to the dealer. Well, he was not sure that his mind 
was exactly as it had been. The poorer the price the 
less assured would she be, the more ready to turn 
away from that sorriest of occupations for a woman, 
earning her own living. 

But perhaps because that girl really was gaining 
ground in his mind, touching his imagination, a new 
idea came. 

It came swiftly, with every element of surprise. 
And he really was astonished, in a sense, at his 
capacity for the idea. And yet he was extraor¬ 
dinarily delighted in some obscure way, as if he 
could not discover why he was so excited, but was 
charmed by the discovery in himself of a new 
capacity. 

But coming now to that idea: she had not sold her 
picture—she would be reduced if she sold it to sell 
it cheap to a dealer. But suppose at this point an 
intervention came—suppose a buyer, a willing buyer, 
stepped forward. Happy circumstance for her, but 


THE HOARDING 


183 


not for him. Yet, wait! Suppose the intervener 
should be himself. Suppose he bought her picture, 
gave her whatever was the price fixed by her when 
leaving the thing with the Academy. Would not her 
happiness have mingled with it a gratitude—yes, 
and a sense of dependence which would be entirely 
proper and pleasant? 

The idea captivated him so that he got up at once 
and went round, highly conscious of himself in the 
character of distinguished patron, to the secretary’s 
office. 

44 There is a picture—‘Waiting’—Number? It’s 
591, and it’s in Room XI. I want to buy it.” 

“Perhaps it’s sold, sir,” suggested the young 

man. 

“Oh, no! As a matter of fact,” said Coleton, “I 
know it isn’t. I happen, in fact, to be aware that the 
artist refused an offer. However, what I want now 
is to buy the picture. I am willing to give the price 
asked, assuming it to be reasonable.” This last to 
maintain the character of patron. A mere clerk must 
not discover in the interested person anxiety, for 
anxiety would suggest emotional possibilities. And 
there were no emotional possibilities available for 
the exploration of Burlington House office boys. 

The secretary’s secretary turned to his books, 
found the page, as once before he had found it in 
response to another inquiry, and was about to quote 
a figure when he looked up. 

“But wait a minute,” he said. “I seem to re¬ 
member-” 

The pucker appeared in Coleton’s forehead. 



184 


THE HOARDING 


Vaguely lie was irritated by the clerk. Why should 
he be troubled with a vulgar disclosure of a clerk’s 
mentality? The fellow should, in relation to himself, 
remain impersonal. u We had a letter from the artist 
this morning.” He dived for a desk, searched let¬ 
ters, and then came forward again. 

“Yes, sir. As I thought. Letter from the artist 
this day. ‘ Please note pict re sold. To be de¬ 
livered to order of—of’ ”—he spelt out the name— 
“ ‘Messrs. Beech & Boxrider.’ ” 

The small pucker in Coleton’s forehead became a 
large one, a noticeable one. 

6 ‘ Tsh! Are you sure ? ’ ’ 

“Quite sure, sir. There’s the name perfectly clear 
—Beech and Boxrider.” 

“Solicitors, I suppose.” 

The young man looked to his brief again, and 
turned over the page. 

“No, sir. Beech & Boxrider, Imperial Buildings, 
the advertising agents.” 


Ill 

He felt it. 

That was the precise form in which he character¬ 
ized in his own mind his condition. Even when most 
disturbed he was always aware of himself—of the 
fact that it was his mind which suffered. He was 
never entirely detached. Like Rasselas, he could 
often be charmed by his consciousness of his own 
capacity to suffer. 

And yet in a swift moment, before he had phrased 


THE HOARDING 


185 


his sensations, lie had had a sharp, direct—what was 
he to call it?—pain. Like any other man. It was 
absurd. It was even rather disturbing that he should 
be disturbed. 

If this girl really chose—was really so entirely 
wanting in proper feeling—yes (firmly), proper feel¬ 
ing ; if her spiritual equipment was inadequate—was 
his solution perfectly simple of the difficulty of the 
situation in which he had seemed to be becoming 
involved? He had bestowed. Yes (again firmly), 
bestowed. He had noticed her, singled her out, and 
his doing so meant that he had done her an honour. 
She could not do him an honour. 

He walked out of Burlington House with an action 
consciously expressive of what he conceived to be 
the idea in his mind: pain, pain, and regretful aban¬ 
donment of a quite interesting and distinctly pleas¬ 
ant relationship. The regret would be largely vica¬ 
rious. He would be sorry for that girl, she would 
feel his withdrawal just when she had believed he 
was interested in her. 

Even when he got outside and had to decide his 
direction, he still believed himself to be occupied 
with the same idea. 

But the curious and perhaps disturbing thing 
about it all was this, that when he did set out he 
seemed to be walking in a direction to follow which 
there could have been no reason at any time, unless 
he were proposing to visit the very person whom 
he had just decided could no longer enjoy the 
sparsely issued privilege of friendship with himself. 



CHAPTER XI 


I 

On the morning of the day in which our distin¬ 
guished Coleton had issued with Jovian dignity 
from his club—first to give what should become 
valuable and cherished memories to his delighted 
bookseller, and then to suffer the pang which is felt 
by all who discover the failure of a first fresh con¬ 
fidence—Lesley was setting out upon a journey into 
the unknown. To her, the City was merely the 
mystery beyond Temple Bar. There had been a 
letter that morning from Boxrider—a curious let¬ 
ter: “My partner has been suggesting that you 
agreed to sell us the picture only after you had been 
argued into it. He wants me to free you from your 
promise, and says that if I do so you will withdraw. 
I have told him that I will not free you, and that, 
even if I did, you would have no wish to withdraw. 
1 had meant to send you the agreement for signa¬ 
ture, but as Mr. Beech has raised this point it oc¬ 
curred to me that you would perhaps not mind 
signing here. You could then tell B. that you are 
not acting under pressure of any sort or kind.” 

Lesley was disturbed, and the thing really was 
less easily dealt with than might appear. Oh, yes, 
she had sold her “Girl,” her wretched picture was 

186 


THE HOARDING 


187 


hers no longer. ... You see to what reaction had 
brought her! 

The fact is she had been under a spell—the spell 
of that young man’s conviction. But the spell had 
faded. Spells have a way of fading in the bright 
light of an early morning following the day on which 
the magic is exerted. This thing—this Advertising 
—the spirit of which had seemed for that brief space 
to have captured her, to have entered into her and 
dominated her mind, had left her. And she re¬ 
mained. That was how she felt. Something had 
died. And without that thing, that conviction, there 
was nothing to support her in the idea that she had 
put herself in touch with a modern reality, that she 
had responded to a whisper of the Time Spirit. She 
felt bereft: in certain moods she came to tell herself 
that she had been tricked—tricked by that man. She 
saw now the character of the apparent concession 
he had yielded. By selling her picture she had been 
told she was not committing herself to a general 
practice; it was not to be understood that she would 
sell further pictures. But that had never really been 
the point. It was a mere shadow offered her in 
exchange for the substance of her picture. 

Oddly enough, while she thought with rising anger 
that she had let herself be defeated, and while she 
could be hot against Boxrider, she yet waited with 
an odd eagerness (she thought it odd anyhow) for 
news of him. More than that, she began to want 
to see him—for only when in contact with him could 
she hope to recapture a conviction to support her 


188 


THE HOARDING 


actions, or, rather, to destroy the intense self-dis¬ 
approval now visiting her. In her newest mood she 
was not in any circumstances to be convinced that 
she had done right in selling; but if he were to 
talk to her again she would at least rediscover some 
element of drama and conflict which would seem to 
restore dignity and character to what, in her present 
mood, seemed a mere sorry reminder. 

The letter she had now received seemed to her to 
offer her a solution of her mental difficulties. By 
responding to his request she would see Boxrider. 
Well, she did not want to examine closely the per¬ 
sonal implications of that reflection. But she would 
get back some sense of character. On the other hand 
Beech, by his wish to free her, would stand her advo¬ 
cate in her new mood. There would be a battle; 
yes, a battle with fire and action and with force 
used. And who knew but that in the battle a re¬ 
shaping might not be achieved of the situation in 
which she had the misfortune to be involved? 

II 

Arriving at Beech & Boxrider’s she was escorted 
through the general office under the curious and 
sardonic observance of James. (Woman—young 
woman; which of them had got hold of herf He 
would like to know some more—a good deal more.) 
He was whistling, which meant that Boxrider was 
not in. He always whistled loudly when Boxrider 
was out, because he knew that, while it annoyed 


THE HOARDING 


189 


Beech, his “master’’ on the one hand never had 
the courage to order him to stop whistling, and on 
the other refused the humiliation of appealing to 
Boxrider. 

Mr. Boxrider w T as out for the moment, the visitor 
was told. 

“But he’ll be back soon, and Mr. Beech is in now 
—if he’ll do.” 

It may have occurred to her that there was some¬ 
thing vaguely depreciatory in the use of Beech’s 
name. But she said he would do. 

Coming to the doorway of the private office she 
saw Beech, that odd, over-eager creature, jumping 
up with an excited air of gratification and contriving 
to overset an inkpot in his haste. She had an idea 
he would always upset something in his haste. 

“Oh, good morning, Miss Senior! Good morn¬ 
ing! Come in. How do you do?” And he held 
out his twitching hand. She was glad she had not 
removed her gloves. He found her a chair close to 
his own—too close to his own according to an odd 
little idea she had—and, sitting there, she had an 
uncomfortable feeling that at any moment his hand 
might close over hers. It is really very odd how, 
from the beginning, she had been made conscious of 
something in him in the nature of a nervous amor¬ 
ousness. . . . She could feel his eyes trying to steal 
glances, feeding on her as it were, when she was 
not looking. His breath touched her; and there was 
all the time that odd, false element in the air. She 
had the idea that the talk—even of the more trivial 



190 


THE HOARDING 


kind—was to be used as an instrument for imposing, 
not merely his mind upon her, but his innermost 
self. 

“You came of course—you came-” 

“Yes,” she broke in, feeling herself already 
speaking with an absurd nervous twitter as if he 
had infected her. “Yes, Mr. Beech, about this pic¬ 
ture. There’s the agreement which I have to 
sign-” 

“Have to? Have to? There is no ‘have to,’ Miss 
Senior. Whatever you may have allowed yourself 
by the eloquence—” with a kind of grimace—“elo¬ 
quence of my partner to be involved in, please con¬ 
sider as not really binding. I authorize”—with a 
deep effort to project a smile—“I authorize your 
freedom.” 

She drew away from him quite involuntarily. He 
was saying the thing she wanted said and—when he 
said it, she was not grateful. 

“I think, as I made the bargain with Mr. Box- 
rider, I must get his permission before suggesting 
withdrawal. ’ ’ 

Beech bit the inner part of his lower lip—a char¬ 
acteristic trick when really checked. 

“Very well.” His voice, she noticed, had been 
raised in key. “Very well. See him.” He got up 
suddenly, stalked to the door, stopped, came back, 
and was about to make a second bolt towards the 
door when Boxrider entered. 

“Oh, good morning!” Boxrider spoke with a 
sudden pleasure. Youth, I suppose, met youth sud- 





THE HOARDING 


191 


denly. It must have been the same in a garden at 
the beginning of the world. It was the “oh!” that 
counted, the “good morning” was the mere stuff 
of talk. She must have understood perfectly, and 
so, certainly, must Beech, for there came a funny 
little flush in his cheek. He seemed to be trying to 
speak, but he said nothing, and at last stood waiting, 
twitchingly, to see how that girl took his partner. 

“Good morning, Mr. Boxrider. I came, as I said 
I would do.” 

“To sign. Yes, good!” 

“Well, I’m not sure. Yes. If you hold me to it, 
I’ll sign.” 

“Hold you to it?” He had been about to reach 
for a drawer to find the document for signature 
when his head shot up. 

“Hold you to it? Why, of course. It was a busi¬ 
ness arrangement, wasn’t it? I’ve just been out 
seeing Kingfords, who are delighted with the whole 
business. They think it’s going to do them more 
good than anything put out for years—since Mr. 

Beech, senior-” he stopped, remembering. “I 

beg your pardon, Beech”—but his partner’s face 
was now already in a flame—“I didn’t mean to say 
that there had been a serious falling-off since you 
took over-” 

“No, you didn’t mean to say that, Boxrider. You 
only wanted to suggest it.” 

Boxrider gazed at his partner now in mere aston¬ 
ishment. Then he seemed to be trying to contrive 
a secret communication to the other man (“You’re 




192 


THE HOARDING 


not fool enough to talk this stuff before women”— 
something of that kind. ‘‘Wait till she’s gone, at 
least”). And then he spoke. “I wanted to suggest 
nothing. Don’t let my friend’s words disturb you, 
Miss Senior. Mr. Beech and I are accustomed to 
absolute frankness with one another.” 

“Yes, we are,” rapped out Beech. “Yes, quite 
true, and I will say now, Boxrider, that I have 
formally given Miss Senior permission to withdraw 
from any arrangement with us.” 

Boxrider looked gravely, ojuietly across to Lesley. 

“And Miss Senior?” he said. 

“I told Mr. Beech that I made the bargain with 
you and that I felt—I must get your agreement 
before withdrawing.” 

“Good! That settles it. I cannot give any such 
agreement. ’ ’ 

Lesley nodded now coldly. “Very well. Have 
you the paper ready?” 

Boxrider stooped again to a drawer in his desk, 
and as he did so there was a sudden movement 
across the room. The next moment the door had 
slammed behind the swiftly retiring figure of Beech, 
the noise making subtle reverberations in the minds 
of the pair remaining. 

For a full minute Boxrider neither made a move¬ 
ment nor utter a word. He remained bending over 
his desk, his eye on a sheaf of papers. Then slowly, 
gravely, he looked up. He made no sign whether of 
satisfaction at something in the nature of a victory 
nor of comment at the humourlessness of his part¬ 
ner’s performance. 


THE HOARDING 


193 


He contented himself with putting forward a 
parchment-like sheet and then with dipping a pen. 

4 4 You will sign here, please, Miss Senior. But one 
moment. You must have a witness.” He rang the 
bell and a boy appeared. 

“Mr. James.” 

The boy went and James appeared. From his 
face he had carefully excluded every kind of ex¬ 
pression. But Lesley, who had not seen the man 
before to-day, had an idea that he considered her 
slowly and not quite impersonally. She had a curi¬ 
ous, remote sense of resentment of that scrutiny of 
his. She felt it to be a veiled impertinence, a curi¬ 
osity to discover some relationship between his 
employer and herself. And she was angry with her¬ 
self because her hand was not quite steady as she 
wrote the name to which the clerk was to witness. 
He bent as soon as her hand came off the paper, 
writing his name slowly and with an offensively 
subtle enjoyment. 

i ‘That all, sir?” He had turned without expres¬ 
sion of any sort to Boxrider. 

“That is all. Thank you, James.” 

James turned and, with the same deliberate move¬ 
ment, went to the door. But in opening it and pass¬ 
ing out he contrived to turn and observe again 1 the 
girl sitting at the desk. Then he closed the door. 

Boxrider was gathering up and folding the con¬ 
tract. 

“That is very satisfactory,” he said, with a 
steadily growing energy which could be supposed by 
a hearer to have for its object the conveyance of 


194 


THE HOARDING 


himself and his visitor into a situation of greater 
comfort. “I am very glad that you did not seek 
to withdraw.” 

“I—I wasn’t given the opportunity,” she broke 
in sharply. 

“No, in a sense you weren’t,” he smiled. “You 
hadn’t signed and so weren’t committed actually 
and legally. But, well, Miss Senior, I exercised the 
moral right which I think was mine. ’ ’ 

“And which I gave you!” 

“Perhaps. But need we go on? I’m sure, when 
you’ve thought more —still more, I mean—you 
won’t really mind.” 

“That,” she said quickly, “needn’t be discussed 
now, Mr. Boxrider, need it? I’ve agreed. And I 
agree that we need not go on. I’ll say good 
morning. ’ ’ 

“Oh, all I meant was need we go on discussing 
the question of the agreement? But I like to talk 
about the picture. Kingfords are delighted. 
They’ve been to the show to see it on the wall, and 
they say it will double their sales.” 

She shuddered—deliberately. 

“That, I fear, doesn’t interest me.” She said 
the words before she knew. They were there to 
say. 

He shrugged his shoulders. “Ah, well! I hope 
it will interest you to see the way we shall turn it 
out. I could get some specimens of reproduction 
from the people who will reproduce your work. 
Then you’d see we should do you justice.” 


THE HOARDING 


195 


“I am really not interested. So please don’t 
trouble. I—I don’t think I’ll wait.” 

“Won’t you? I’d like you to see the way they 
do things. I’ll ring up and ask them to send along 
some specimens.” 

“No, please.” She had already moved towards 
the door and he had to step forward to open it for 
her. In that small matter, as she felt, she was hav¬ 
ing her own way. He had a notion, observing her, 
that she was determined to have it—that to give it 
her was to give her a consolation. 

And as she walked out of the room, the poor girl 
read that thought in his mind—and lost her tri¬ 
umph. He was giving her her way to console her! 

All the same, out she marched, her head up! 
Bless the woman! Bless all women! 

Ill 

Her instinct was to get away. She could not dis¬ 
cover anything satisfactory either in her day or in 
some of the events of the past week in which she 
had been involved. She was pursued now by con¬ 
sciousness of an essential inconsistency, evidenced 
not merely or so much in her mere changes of policy 
as in the deep, instinctive impulses which had gov¬ 
erned her actions. By allowing these impulses in 
conflict to use her as their battle-ground she made 
it possible for her to accuse herself of failure in 
prerogative, and so of a lapse in dignity. A lapse? 
Many lapses! 


196 


THE HOARDING 


She grew impatient with herself, intolerant even. 
She could not easily perceive any place of refuge. 
There she had been fighting for a principle, ready 
to die for it (well, starve for it, anyhow), and then 
by the action of a defaulting imagination, a traitor¬ 
ous imagination, an imagination which was entirely 
wanting in a sense of what was due to its owner, 
she had been betrayed to the enemy. She had al¬ 
lowed her mind to be captured by that man’s glori¬ 
fication of his hoarding. She had let herself see the 
thing in his terms. Then when reaction came, when 
that caitiff imagination had been beaten down and 
she ought to have been free—when, indeed, she 
could have been free—she had failed to grasp her 
freedom. She was futile, ludicrous; she was with¬ 
out standpoint as well as without what the Ameri¬ 
cans called poise. She felt appallingly trivial. The 
whole situation was absurd, and its absurdity was 
the greater because not only had her mind momen¬ 
tarily invested it with dignity and even splendour, 
but it still gave it an entirely exaggerated conse¬ 
quence. She would have liked to have talked to a 
man different from these with whom she had just 
been dealing—somebody cool and wise. 

Still thus thinking she left her bus in King’s Road 
and was hurrying towards the flat (hurrying, yes, 
because the physical movement might signify at¬ 
tempt to escape from intellectual toils), when a voice 
hailed her from behind. Turning she discovered the 
smiling eyes of Claude Coleton. 




CHAPTER XII 


I 

Coleton, planning to see her, was not prepared 
for the sudden meeting; and as for her, she felt all 
her thoughts pulled up sharp. For why—here was 
the wise, cool mind! 

Her mind was in the condition in which the minds 
of women sometimes are, when the smallest impulse 
one way or another may involve a spiritual journey 
of many miles along a path from which there are no 
byways. Colour came to her cheek, her eyes shone. 
Merely reaction? Scarcely. Coleton before had 
stirred her; and to-day she was in the mood for him. 
As for the man he read her excitement and pushed 
his advantage. 

“How very happily met, Miss Lesley Senior. I 
thought I was never to see you again; and at the 
R.A. to-day-” 

“You were there!” 

She was suddenly constrained. (Like a child 
found out was liis complacent reflection; and per¬ 
haps she herself had some objective view of herself 
at that moment, and knew in what character she 
must be appearing to him.) 

“Yes, I was there, and I am not sure”—with a 
contrived air of regret—“I’m not sure that I wasn’t 

197 



198 


THE HOARDING 


sorry that I ever went.” They were practically on 
the doorstep. “But,” he went on pleadingly, “you 
won’t leave me standing here, will you? For there 
was something I really wanted rather badly to say, 
don’t you know!” 

“Then”—with a little waving forward of a hand 
—“you’d better come in, Mr. Coleton. I expect Mrs. 
Graeme will be back by now.” 

He had been about to say “Need Mrs. Graeme 
necessarily,” but he was a man who never yielded 
to impulse—or he believed that he never did. 
(Actually, of course, it was only by yielding to an 
impulse that he had come here at all.) 

Entering the flat, she led her visitor to the sitting- 
room. By an empty grate which was neat with the 
neatness of midsummer lay Netta’s little beaded 
slippers—a pretty half-human touch in the midst of 
the inanimate room. She saw that his eyes rested 
upon them and then turned, looking towards her 
feet. Men were so inevitably restricted! 

She had begun already to be vividly conscious of 
him—conscious of him in a way she had not been 
out of doors. It was as if the walls literally brought 
them within some narrow and narrowing compass. 
She was convinced that this effect was an achieve¬ 
ment of his—something deliberately executed. She 
was, indeed, so much aware of him to-day, he was so 
dominant in his curious, special, subtle way (or had 
begun to be), that she forgot minute criticisms of 
him which once had occupied her mind. 

She had retreated from those adventurers—those 


THE HOARDING 


199 


priests of Commerce (rather unkindly she mentally 
left Beech beside his partner and refused to dis¬ 
tinguish him from his environment), and her mind 
now was ready for help from any challenger of the 
spirit of Trade. And now here she was, facing one 
such very man. If only Coleton had known, he could 
not have found an hour more fortunate for any plot 
of his in relation to this girl. 

She was bitterly conscious of futility in her con¬ 
duct of her own life; she felt little and foolish, and 
charged herself with being highly excited about 
small things. Part of her trouble was, of course, 
that even her artistic lapse—to characterize her 
action as she did—was really insignificant; a storm 
in a tea cup. Most of us, if looking for an action 
promising moral dignity to ourselves, would choose 
a storm in the Atlantic rather than one in a cup of 
tea. If you are drowned then you are at least a 
man, a heroic figure. 

Poor Lesley saw herself a fly—yet a fly that 
struggled, that experienced all the exertions of 
something larger and that suffered with the greatest. 

And now here was Coleton—Coleton who could 
help her to feel less of a fly, to whom her problem 
would not only be a real problem, but a problem for 
something greater than flies. 

“Mrs. Graeme will be in for tea, I know,” Lesley 
announced with just that element of constraint 
which he found charming. She was conscious of the 
fact that a man —this man—was alone with her in 
a room remote from the world. That consciousness 


200 


THE HOAKDING 


was in her view right and fitting. It created the 
atmosphere he wanted, the atmosphere in which he 
could breathe and move. 

4 4 Oh, we can get on very well I am sure with¬ 
out-” 

“Tea?” she suggested quickly. 

“Very well,” he returned blandly. “Let us say 
tea.” 

He was watching her carefully. “You know,” 
he went on slowly, “when I was at the Academy 
this afternoon I made an effort to buy a picture— 
a picture I wanted to possess—not because of its 
undoubted genuine artistic merit, but because of the 
great attraction it had for me.” 

“You mean-” she felt constrained again. 

“You knew the scene of the picture—or was it a 
portrait?” 

“It was neither, Miss Lesley Senior. It was a 
picture of a girl whom I did not know and in whom 
I was not interested. My interest in the picture was 
measured by my interest in the painter—which, if 
I may say so, was overwhelming. But when I called 
at the office to ask the price, they told me that the 
picture had been sold . . . and not only that”—His 
melancholy voice had sunk and was slow and sad. 
(How absurdly her heart was beating.) “But I 
learnt to my sorrow that this picture, which was 
the expression of a bright and charming spirit—the 
brightest and most charming which I have ever been 
permitted to encounter—may I say that humbly and 
in all sincerity?—that this picture which had so 





THE HOARDING 


201 


expressed that spirit had been surrendered to com¬ 
merce.” 

So confused was her mind that she scarcely ob¬ 
served that element of unreality in the texture of 
the speech, that rotundity. She was still feeling the 
reaction from her surrender of her picture; and 
certainly she was in no mood to justify anything 
she had done, nor to criticize the quality of his talk. 
He stood for the things approved by what she con¬ 
ceived to be her static self—the self which admired 
beauty and shrank from the vulgar and the sordid. 
In her nervous apprehension she was even ready 
to fear that he despised her—yes, to fear it. 

“I don’t want to press”—he smiled brightly— 
“to press the point of my own disappointment. 
Because, after all, the decision of the artist isn’t 
my business.” She looked at him suddenly and 
gratefully, and he read her quite easily, congratu¬ 
lating himself now on his avoidance of the line he 
had thought of taking—the line of a gentle reproof. 
She had too much spirit to submit to a scolding. 
“It wasn’t my business,” he went on slowly, mur- 
murously, “yet.” 

He dropped the word into the room and then 
turned to catch a glimpse of her face. She had not 
understood, he was sure. But she still sat there, 
and without leaving his chair he turned towards her. 
“I wonder, Miss Lesley Senior, if I may call you 
by a name less formal?—if it would ever be pos¬ 
sible-” he leaned still closer, and now she did 

perceptibly move back her chair. 



202 


THE HOARDING 


Hitherto he had kept that rigid hold upon him¬ 
self which he had maintained in all his relations 
with women: one spoke softly in dim lights, one’s 
hand went forward towards a conquest and found 
a dainty outpost waiting for capture; one whispered, 
drew confidences, and presently slipped away know¬ 
ing that the gate into that country was now secured. 

But to-day he found that that slight withdrawal 
of hers had taken him suddenly after her. Only in 
retrospect could he realize what, precisely, he did 
now. All he knew now was that he was behaving 
like an ordinary human man—such a man as he 
projected in his own books. (Afterwards he re¬ 
captured enough of his detachment to select the 
particular character of his own creation which most 
approximated to his new conception of himself— 
Geoffrey Stirling. And it is perhaps curious to re¬ 
flect that this Stirling had always seemed to him 
most nearly to approximate to the general idea of 
a complete and admirable male. He recalled the 
characterization: “Vigour and beauty. . . . The 
sight of that figure framed in the doorway made the 
hearts of women. . . And then, “A strong man 
in love moves towards either a consummation of 
bliss or—tragedy. Stirling, from whom there 
seemed to emanate a spiritual vigour. . . . ” 

Strength. A strong man swept by passion. That 
was Stirling and that, now, was—himself.) 

He was inexpressibly thrilled. His psychology 
was sufficiently developed to allow of his rejoicing 
at his perception of his own capacity to think only 


THE HOARDING 


203 


of this girl. Actually, while he believed himself to 
be thinking only of this girl, he was not thinking 
only of this girl but of himself. And yet he was 
thinking only of this girl. The paradox, he decided, 
w T as not a paradox at all really. 

In exchanging for his old picture of himself this 
new one—this portrait of Stirling—he thus suc¬ 
ceeded in preserving that satisfaction in his own 
temper and character which another and lesser man, 
allowing himself to repicture himself, might have 
lost. 

But for the moment he was merely conscious of 
being a man—admirable or otherwise. 

II 

“Lesley—you will let me call you Lesley? . . . 
I have known you for so short a time. Yet you 
have come to fill so great a part of my life. Do you 
think you would let me occupy part of yours ?’ ’ 

She still did not criticize (if she had done so she 
would probably have reflected merely that he could 
not help talking like a book, seeing that he was 
always writing books). She merely drew further 
away. 

“I don’t pretend that I don’t understand you,” 
she said, marvelling at her own resoluteness. “But 
please don’t say any more, Mr. Coleton.” 

“But I mean it. You can’t dismiss a thing like 
this just by asking me to say no more.” 

In a mood of greater detachment he could have 


204 


THE HOARDING 


been distressed that she did not show greater ap¬ 
preciation of the fact that he —he was being moved 
by a direct and elementary impulse. 

In brief flashes he still saw himself, but they were 
flashes such as those flashes of light which one gets 
travelling by railway through a tunnel when the 
train goes by a ventilating shaft. He was in a 
tunnel, knowing no more than that he w r as rushing 
forward—into the light! 

“I mean it. I want you to answer me. You will 
let me see more of you Lesley—dear.” 

“I-” But she stopped. Somebody was turn¬ 

ing a key in the latch. 

“Yes, you will,” he pleaded, drawing near. 

She had risen, a quick colour in her cheek. 

“Say yes. No, not just that—say you’ll give me 
all I ask now. Say you’ll let me see you.” 

“Why, yes. Of course, Mr. Coleton.” 

There was a step in the hall. 

“Why not Claudef” He had dropped his voice. 
(Somebody had once called it his “sticky” voice. 
But Lesley only heard a man, really moved to speak, 
speaking.) 

‘ ‘ Claude. ’ ’ 

She had not meant to say it, but she whispered 
the word suddenly, and darted away as the door¬ 
handle turned and Netta Graeme stood there. 

A sudden glow came into the eyes of the new¬ 
comer. 

“Mr. Coleton? But how kind.” 

If an observer had followed her from the street 



THE HOARDING 


205 


he might have contrasted a heavily jaded air which 
had hung about her till she came to the threshold of 
the sitting-room with her swift brightening of eye 
and speech and manner. She had read the whole 
thing, of course. 

He had come there, naturally, expecting to see 
her; he had found nothing but poor little dull 
Lesley to entertain him, and he had been sitting 
there patiently waiting. He really deserved any 
smiles she could spare for him now! As for Lesley 
—poor little Lesley! The girl’s air of excitement 
made it quite clear to anyone of experience that she 
was still feeding herself on illusions. On the other 
hand, she (Netta) could not very well undeceive the 
poor child unless Lesley came to her for advice. 
Then she would do her best to be gentle. . . . But 
it really had its absurd, even its irritating, side. 
And in any case there was the man waiting for her 
now. . . . She sat down, then suddenly murmured 
something about “tea.” 

The tea was laid ready—a spirit kettle stand had 
merely to be lighted. But Lesley might have had 
the mere intelligence to disappear. This idea played 
about her mind all the time now. There was that 
man sitting there waiting; and the wretched girl; 
feeding on her own sorry little illusion, sat there 
too. Could not she see—or, if she did so, was she 
so inconceivable a little egotist that she must ignore 
the desires of other people whenever those desires 
conflicted with her own ? There had been a time when 
she had been genuinely sorry for Lesley, but sym- 


206 


THE HOARDING 


pathy had given way to impatience, and now another 
and stronger feeling was certainly gaining ground 
in her. Yet she pressed down her anger smilingly, 
handing the man his tea, talking follies—the dead 
season, the end of the picture show, invitations he 
had had to go north. 

4 ‘Are you going away?” he asked. 

“I?” She smiled. “When I go it isn’t north 
that I go. Two hours from London is the furthest 
the chain of the poor permits them to wander.” 

Se did not call him “Claude”; she noticed how 
carefully he avoided the “Netta” before Lesley. 
She drew a subtle pleasure from that understand¬ 
ing, and even a delight in addressing him as “Mr. 
Coleton.” She could feel that as he looked across 
at her he appreciated the special quality of that 
form of allusion on her lips. 

“Still, you ought to think of Scotland— Oban . 
Oban for two reasons: charmingly situated”—he 
fell easily to these feeble cliches of topography— 
“and I shall be staying near.” 

“Most excellent reasons, of course!” This with 
a touch of whimsy. Netta was a mistress of the 
light touch. 

And now, clearly, the old eagerness was coming 
back. Why, she might say it was in flood. First 
he came after her here (why could not that girl 
understand?), and now he must even have her near 
him in Scotland. 

Presently, and yet with a clear dissatisfaction at 
doing so (clear to both women, as it would have 


THE HOARDING 


207 


been clear to a scarcely interested spectator had one 
been present), he got up to go. He seemed to wait 
or to manoeuvre a delay and looked from one to 
another. 

Nett a moved slightly—a mere indication. She 
would see him to the door; Lesley surely would 
have the sense to remain in the room. And ap¬ 
parently Lesley had, for when Mrs. Graeme had 
passed into the hall and was being followed by the 
man, he paused and for a moment retreated. 

“My gloves. I always do leave something.” 

Back in the room he seized Lesley’s hand. 

“Good-bye. Not a final good-bye, I mean. And 
you’ll think of what I said and let me-” 

“I’ll think—the only promise I can make.” She 
tried to smile and the next minute he was gone. 

In the hall he stood smiling to Netta, lifted her 
hand, bowed, and opened the door. 

“Good-bye.” She saw his eyes look beyond her 
to the half-open door of the sitting-room. A little 
patch of colour came into her cheeks. So that was 
it. That chit would listen and watch, and being a 
man he was afraid! He was away before she could 
encourage him—detain him. 

But when the door stood between him and herself 
she was quite clear. Lesley had spoilt everything— 
everything . The silly little egotism of the girl. . . . 
But it was becoming a bore and would soon be rather 
worse than a bore. 

She was genuinely sorry for Lesley—poor little 
deluded Lesley! What curious things women were. 



208 


THE HOARDING 


How easily they ran to self-deceptions! But this 
particular absurdity would have to be dealt with. 
She did not want to be what was called 1 1 unkind/’ 
but there was no help for it. With a little tighten¬ 
ing of the lips she walked slowly towards the sitting- 
room door. As she stood in the doorway she met 
Lesley’s eyes, excited, eager, but not happy. 

Netta almost forebore; but she would have to 
speak sooner or later, she told herself, and it would 
be easier now while the circumstances were fresh 
in the minds of each. 

“Lesley, may I say something, dear?” The girl 
looked up suddenly and with some little ironic twist 
of the lips at the unaccustomed endearment. 

“Why, of course.” 

“Don’t you think”—Netta had dropped her voice 
and was using an accent of velvet softness—“don’t 
you think that when a man comes to see a particular 
woman and a second woman is present the second 
woman ought perhaps to—well understand and— 
and-” 

“Leave them?” Lesley seemed to be smiling. 

“Well, yes, dear. That is what I meant.” 

“I don’t see it myself. I suppose you were think¬ 
ing of to-day?” 

“Well, yes, dear. Yes. I-” 

“Then I don’t think it would have done any good. 
I’d really have been more”—she began to be uneasy 
—“more uncertain than I was. I didn’t know what 
to say—I’d no idea. I cum’t think I like him very 




THE HOARDING 


209 


much.” (Poor little Lesley! as if anyone believed 
that denial.) 

“Yes, but didn’t you think that we might like to 
be alone together for a few minutes ? ’ ’ 

“We?” 

“Claude and I.” 

Suddenly the girl sprang up. Her face underwent 
at once a most astonishing change; all colour had 
died out of her cheek. 

“You—you! But—but, Netta . . . it’s absurd.” 

“Absurd!” Netta’s voice rose, suddenly shrill; 
she, too, was losing touch with the situation. “You! 
Do you realize-” 

“Oh, I realize—we’ve—we’ve muddled some¬ 
thing ! I said absurd because I meant I didn’t know 
you—you wanted him, and when he asked me this 
afternoon I-” 

“Asked you? Asked you? What did he ask you? 
Don’t think, my dear child, that just because a man 
asks you to go and stay near him in Scotland, or 
rather asks you to persuade the woman you live with 
to go with you for a holiday near where-” 

“No, I didn’t think that, Netta. I did not mean 
that. He asked me—yes, I suppose he meant that 
—he asked me ” 

“Yes?” 

“To marry him.” 






CHAPTER XIII 


I 

In the meantime Beech, flinging himself from the 
office and neither knowing nor caring where he went, 
had gone down into the street and was walking 
quickly westwards. His mind was of the kind which 
is easily blinded—blinded by a frenzy. It could not 
be said that he had any kind of consciousness of his 
surroundings as he pushed on through the streets, 
even that he carried with him any impression of the 
scene which he had just deserted. He was merely 
shut up with two other people—the two he had left 
behind him in that room: shut up in some place of 
darkness, thick with the atmosphere of hate; gloomy, 
impenetrable by the light of reason. Hate—that 
was it—the only vivid idea. He hated, hated—yes, 
hated—the woman, as a man sick with passion hates 
the object of that passion when she withholds her¬ 
self from him coolly. A passionate rejection of him¬ 
self he will bear; a mere ignoring, a withdrawal, 
he finds hideous, intolerable. By ignoring him she 
implacably excludes him spiritually from her pres¬ 
ence; she finds him, not merely antipathetic but 
irrelevant; she puts him outside and leaves him 
there. . . . And that was what that woman had 
done to him. She was laughing at him. She was 

210 


THE HOARDING 


211 


ready to laugh at him when she wasn’t avoiding him 
or shrinking from him. And she did shrink from 
him—he could feel it even in the way she took her 
hand away. It wasn’t withdrawn as would be the 
hand of a woman who suspects that some day she 
will be giving it of her own accord. There was— 
yes, he would own it—distaste in the action—dis¬ 
taste clearly indicated. 

It is interesting in this history of certain souls 
to note this quality of clear thinking in the man’s 
despair of her ever looking at him. . . . He, at 
least, could not have her. . . . He could not have 
her; and he had never wanted a woman before . . . 
and now he had seen one, and he could not have her. 

With sudden fury he quitted his thoughts of her 
for Boxrider. And now the darkness about him 
seemed to thicken and to close him in. Night, ulti¬ 
mate night. How was it that he had ever endured 
this man? How had he let him enter his life, gain 
that easy mastery, sit in yonder office mocking him, 
his partner, Beech, by his easy mastery of those 
clerks, those impudent creatures. ... Yes, he cried 
to himself in a new frenzy, that fellow had deliber¬ 
ately used the staff to create in him, his senior, the 
sense of despite which now always oppressed him. 
He would not be surprised if Boxrider paid James 
to whistle in the outer office when the senior partner 
happened to be alone in the inner. That would be 
precisely characteristic of the fellow. But that was 
only a minor offence in Boxrider, who at all points 
strove to reduce his partner to the level of his clerks. 


THE HOARDING 


212 

There was something else: there was this—Box- 
rider^ easy assumption of control of that woman. 
What did he mean by it? (How shrill did one’s 
thoughts as well as one’s speech, seem to become! 
And it was Boxrider who mocked him, made him 
scream! Yes, scream! Once he wondered why the 
people about him didn’t start away in alarm and 
astonishment.) 

But what did Boxrider mean? Was he merely 
resolved to contrive a new humiliation for the 
partner who stood out (here Beech for a moment 
tried to see himself in the character of protagonist 
of a revolt) against the corruption and vulgarity of 
the age into which he had had the misery to be 
born? Was his insistence on that girl signing the 
contract intended simply as a contemptuous chal¬ 
lenge to himself, and would Boxrider have equally 
insisted on her not signing, if he (Beech) had wished 
her to sign? Did Boxrider contemn him sufficiently 
to invent a situation in which he could inflict fresh 
humiliation ? 

But now Beech became troubled by a new emotion; 
a strange quality of sickness invaded his innermost 
heart. In a sense he had known jealousy—had 
always known it. His was a spirit easily made jeal¬ 
ous. He had been jealous of small things; of the 
possession by others of perceptions or aptitudes 
denied to himself. He had been deeply jealous of 
Boxrider’s success in control of the staff. But he 
was jealous now with a jealousy which entered his 
soul like a pervasive and deadly poison. Jealous of 


THE HOARDING 


213 


Boxrider in relation to a woman. . . . Love-jeal¬ 
ousy. It was something which consumed, which 
devoured, which charged him with a new flame of 
hate. (Melodrama? Fiction? Quite so. But here 
precisely is the psychology for setting out melo¬ 
dramas. . . . Dark figures creep out of shadows. 
It is night. ... Or a hand pushes from below the 
curtain. ... Or there is merely a cry at midnight 
—it must be midnight. . . . But it is not only 
people with pens projecting a puppet life who see 
unrealities, for whom the balance is disturbed.) 

II 

Beech had taken no notice of his path; but he was 
still pushing on westward, and coming into a block 
of people he had perforce to pull up and look about 
him. He was, he saw, in Piccadilly Circus. He 
thought people looked at him in vague uneasiness. 
They thought he was mad, no doubt. Perhaps he 
was mad. Even if he was not now he soon would 
be. Yes, mad! And then Boxrider would have his 
final laugh. Boxrider would telephone for the police 
and would get James into the private office to help 
to hold him. How James would like that! How 
he would smile and whistle! He shook himself free 
and plunged on—into Piccadilly. 

So that a third man was nearing a point where 
two others had previously come—to the development 
for each of a situation of an important kind. Beech 
had no notion of Burlington House. He came there 


214 


THE HOARDING 


by a mere accident. But there, having come, he 
was immediately arrested by a notice: “Last Day 
of Exhibition.’ ’ 

It was years since he had visited the Academy. 
The memory of the last occasion took him back to 
the days when he had been young enough to cherish 
dreams of establishing for himself some contact 
with things of beauty. 

Years. . . . And certainly, apart from a particu¬ 
lar reason, he would have no impulse to do other 
than pass by the entrance; indeed, the sight of the 
crowd going in and out merely increased an im¬ 
patience with all that were of his kind. But an idea 
struck him now almost plumb. That picture. It 
was still hanging here. The picture which had 
brought him into contact—the only sort of contact 
he would ever have—with this girl. The picture 
which, indeed, had been the means of bringing him 
face to face with woman, the first woman who had 
moved him. 

For one moment he hesitated. Then, with a swift 
half-turn, he entered the courtyard and began to 
ascend the carpeted stair. He knew very little of 
picture shows, and at the turnstile he spoke to the 
attendant in a sudden hot way. 

“I’ve come to see a picture—a picture of a girl. 
It’s-” He stopped suddenly. Did he look ex¬ 

cited? Was there something really noticeable in his 
manner. “I suppose,” he said, with sudden calm, 
“that what I want is a catalogue.” 

“Yes, sir. Over there for catalogues,” said the 
man, watching the other with that curiosity, intense, 




THE HOARDING 


215 


but free from nervous suspicion, which character¬ 
izes the Londoner when in contact with what seem 
to him odd manifestations of character. 

Beech bought his catalogue, discovered that it was 
Room XI that he wanted, and immediately hastened 
thither through the crowd. On this last day of the 
show it was a mixed crowd. He had just enough 
leisure from himself to see that. Country cousins 
who delight in the London of August were mixed 
with the suburbs; while here and there Society, 
willing to see itself once more upon the wall, looked 
round upon a naive, admiring middle-class, and 
found an hour on its journey through London to 
the North to appear in the melee. And so there 
Beech stood—the third man to have his mind and 
spirit, things imperishable, involved with that 
simple and humanly devised and ephemeral thing 
upon yonder wall. Its significance seemed to him 
to be obtruded; but he was, inevitably, in the mood 
to be conscious of obtrusions—perhaps to find them. 
He stood looking at the picture with a strange, ex¬ 
cited glare, so that people jostling him, and catching 
a glimpse of his eye, decided that he was the poor 
wretch who had painted the thing, and who now, on 
the last day, still waiting for a purchaser, who was 
determined by the steadiness of his observation to 
draw other eyes to his work. 

But the man himself knew and cared nothing for 
the men and women floating in eddies about him 
—those flimsy-gowned women, those men in the 
pleasant pallor of their midsummer tweeds. Voices 
spoke; and if you had listened you would have dis- 


216 


THE HOARDING 


covered that “He did not send to the Academy now, 
and a man who knows him and knows my husband 
assured us that it is merely drink. And it is such 
a pity . . that “When we were in Italy we did 
every picture in every gallery from Rome to Venice, 
and ticked off each when we’d seen it so as to make 
no mistake, so we never think anything of doing this 
place, you know . . . ”; and that 4 ‘ What I said was 
. . . and he said . . . and so I said then, ‘You’d 
perhaps better not come here again,’ and he took the 
hint . . . and that’s that. . . . Do look at that 
woman. ... No, the one over there by the picture 
of Kitchener. . . . Did you ever see . . . and I’m 
sure she thinks it suits her. That kind does. . . . 
Whatever’s the matter with that man? This one 
near us, I mean. He’s been looking up at that pic¬ 
ture for a quarter of an hour. He was there when 
I came into the room. Artist? ... No, it’s by a 
girl—some Lesley Senior. Or is Lesley a man’s 
name? Spelt with a ‘y,’ I mean. Yes, let’s go and 
get an ice.” 

Not that he heard. Sound came to him as from 
some other planet, as if its place of origin was sepa¬ 
rated from him by some infinitude of experience. 
Had he examined himself—and he was in no mood 
to do that—he could probably have found himself 
believing that these other people and himself moved 
in separate dimensions. All he had to-day, in re¬ 
lation to them, was a feeling of shrinking distaste, 


THE HOARDING 


217 


as if their touch, or even the mere rumour of them, 
contaminated. 

But the hatred in him, finding outlet within this 
room, rather ignored those crowds; it went for the 
picture—the picture which hung there a symbol of 
his defeat and humiliation. He found himself 
hating the face of the girl who had sat for it; he 
discovered in it a coarseness, a malignancy ludi¬ 
crously the opposite of the fact; but the very atmos¬ 
phere which he breathed seemed to him instinct 
with taunts. The thought pressed that he could 
never have met Lesley if it had not been for that 
picture and that wall by means of which his partner 
had been enabled to discover that picture. Ulti¬ 
mately, indeed, it was this crowd which, by giving 
its support, had made possible the exhibition, by 
means of which alone the picture could have hung 
where it did. . . . But such reminders did nothing 
for him: he scarcely suffered them. 

He merely stood there knowing himself charged 
with a deep consuming passion of hatred. He had 
no sense of tenderness for the girl; she had joined 
in his humiliation; and if he could have involved 
her, himself, and Boxrider in one devouring flame 
he would have done it. He stole away at last with¬ 
out so much as a glance for any other wall. Crossing 
the courtyard he turned into Piccadilly. He felt 
extraordinarily hot now in the sun; his lips seemed 
dried up; his heart kept pounding. He hurried on. 
Where he was going he knew not. He merely 
went on. 


CHAPTER XIV 


I 

When Beech had flung out, Boxrider had 
shrugged his shoulders. He never over-perturbed 
himself about his partner; and when next morning 
Beech came there as usual he offered neither remon¬ 
strance nor comment. As for Beech, it seemed to 
the junior that while that overstrung creature was 
more than usually the victim of some nervous ex¬ 
citement, and while he seemed curiously furtive 
(“For all the world as if he’d been plotting,” was 
his partner’s thought), he was yet striving with a 
kind of energy that was almost passionate to wear 
an air of the normal. He talked—talked hard. 

“ ‘Tranquillity’ underwear, so Bexley says, want 
to book up space in the 4 Evening Views’ for a year. 
That would be good business, because they take a 
large space. I always recommend them to do that. ’ ’ 

Boxrider nodded. He did not say that “Tran¬ 
quillity” underwear were contemplating this con¬ 
tract only after he had laboured to convince them; 
he knew quite well that Beech knew that he had 
procured this new business; he knew that Beech 
knew that he perfectly understood his partner’s real 
thought; he even knew that Beech was conscious of 

218 


THE HOARDING 


219 


his forbearance in not claiming the credit. At any 
other time perception of forbearance would have 
angered Beech almost as much as if there had been 
no forbearance and the truth had been delivered 
blatantly. And this morning Beech merely nodded. 
Beech, who was only normal when abnormal ... an 
excited Beech, the normal man, as he (Boxrider) con¬ 
ceived him, troubled him not at all. But this sane 
and apparently balanced Beech perplexed and even 
troubled the junior partner. It really seemed as if, 
obscure, intangible, a purpose was being fashioned 
by that strange febrile intelligence—a purpose 
which now operated the speech and actions of a 
man usually uncontrolled. 

“D’you know, Boxrider,” said the senior partner, 
“I’ve been thinking. There’s a good deal of really 
good work which we don’t touch.” 

“You mean?” Sharply. 

“Publicity work, as you call it—for, well, for 
private individuals. ’ ’ 

“Why should we touch petty little things of that 
kind?” 

“Petty? That is your word.” Beech spoke 
coldly, so that he still maintained his self-control. 

“It may be my word. All the same I certainly 
do not think there is room in this firm for doing 
work of that kind. It is petty! ’ ’ 

“Really, Boxrider, you have a very singular point 
of view. Apparently you prefer this vulgar pushing 
of vulgar people’s drinks and underclothing to the” 
—his lips narrowed as he grew more pedantic—“ the 


220 


THE HOARDING 


dissemination of interesting information about per¬ 
sons of distinction. ’ ’ 

‘ 4 That kind of thing—I’ve nothing against it if 
it’s done by the proper people. But the proper 
people are journalists—newspaper folk who know 
which men deserve attention and which don’t; and 
who measure space accordingly. We’ve no means 
of sorting out the humbugs from the genuine stuff. 
We’re not the people.” (What on earth had Beech 
in his mind? Must every suggestion that came from 
him be inevitably futile?) 

“You mean then,” said Beech, “that you are 
opposed to our undertaking unobtrusive and—er— 
honourable and distinguished work which brings us 
into touch with Art and Learning, and-” 

“Art! Learning! What have we to do with Art 
and Learning? And as to being opposed to your 
suggestion—well, I’m sorry, Beech, but I am. 
There.” 

“Very well,” said the now impenetrable Beech. 
“No more shall be said.” 

Boxrider observed his partner for a moment, then 
shrugged his shoulders; and finally, suddenly re¬ 
membering that he was due at Kingfords, he got up. 
He began gathering up papers from a drawer and 
was quickly engrossed. Beech was obviously in 
some odd, inexplicable mood this morning. He did 
not understand him. Perhaps it was the extraordi¬ 
nary quiet of the man that fixed the conversation 
in Boxrider’s mind: it certainly seemed fixed. And 





THE HOARDING 


221 


when later he tried to remember he found he had 
every word of that talk quite clear. 

He got up now, in his hand the latest correspon¬ 
dence with Kingfords about Lesley Senior’s picture. 
It occurred to him that Beech had not seen this 
letter, but he was careful not to obtrude it now. 
Beech was so startlingly calm this morning. . . . 
Boxrider was already at the door, bearing with him 
that conviction of an unnatural quietude, when half 
turning he looked back. Beech was sitting at his 
desk; but his eyes were now raised, and, meeting 
them, Boxrider discovered suddenly that they had 
been observing him with a strange steady half- 
smiling intent. 


CHAPTER XV 


I 

Lesley’s abrupt encounter with the fact of Netta 
Graeme’s interest in Coleton sent the girl literally 
staggering. She could not stand steady, she lost 
all notion of reality; standing there, looking at her 
companion, she began to believe that they were all 
involved in some absurd fantasy. Certainly she 
could discover no relief; and yet relief was at hand 
and came, remarkably enough, from Netta Graeme. 

4 4 Since you are so sure, dear, do not let us quar¬ 
rel; there are so few things that are worth quarrel¬ 
ling about, least of all men. There never could be 
a man who was worth the drawing of a rapier—or 
ought one to say a hat pin?” 

She deliberately brought the talk down to that 
lower level. She was smiling deliberately and care¬ 
fully—and looking into her eyes Lesley saw there 
neither pain nor malice. The whole gesture of the 
elder woman now was that of a shrug—a shedding 
of an illusion—and of some less important illusion. 

“I suppose I ought to congratulate you; and there 
w r as a time when I could have done so. It is odd to 

think that I-” She deliberately broke off, smiled 

as at an obscure memory, and then went on: “Yes, 
there was once- But it is your turn now.” 

222 




THE HOARDING 


223 


“What do you mean? That he used once to— 
to-” 

“Make love to—to- My dear, there are many 

‘he’s’ in the world.’* 

“Then you are only trying to hint things that 
aren’t true. You want me to believe that-” 

“I want you to believe precisely what your com¬ 
mon sense tells you, my dear. I merely state a case. 
Take a man and a woman. We will by no means 
say which man and which woman. Perhaps they 
are mere figures in a story by a celebrated writer 
of novels. I don’t know. But take a case. A man 
is always troubling a woman with his dreadfully 
disturbing passions. At last, worn out by his fear¬ 
ful importunities, she consents to receive him. But 
very quickly her poor little endurance begins to 
crack. He begins—let me put it gently—to tire her. 
He is always contriving meetings, always standing 
in her path. And she submits—though, really, she 
is woefully weary. But at last even her submissions 
end. She tries to disengage herself, and finally she 
deliberately practises to be free. Yes, practises . 
She goes forth a dowd, she troubles his inexhaustible 
self-content by the things she says. And finding 
that even these efforts fail, she tells him at last that 
she is tired and that he must see her less often. 
Find somebody else, she says. All you want, really, 
is a young, fresh mind on which you can feed your 
hungry egotism; he denies this, but so completely 
under the woman’s domination is he that he begins 
at last to accept her ideas of himself, begins even 





224 


THE HOARDING 


to obey her. Find someone else. The poor man 
begins to try to find someone else. He makes 
several attempts, and at last comes back to the 
woman, with the plaint that he has failed. Appar¬ 
ently he has been—shall we say?—making one more 
attempt. Of course this is all merely a story.’’ 

“Yes,” said Lesley gravely, “a story. When we 
were children we used the word as it ought to be 
used now.” 

Netta smiled calmly. “It doesn’t matter very 
much what it is, does it? If it is a story—a story 
it is! But there are such things as true stories.” 

“Only this doesn’t happen to be one.” 

Another shrug from Netta. “I wonder. But we 
shall see. I have seen too many—too many—cases, 
and the end of each has been that the poor woman 
in the story has had to let him come back and remain 
till she can send him off again on a new chase. If 
it isn’t a true story we shall not see what—well— 
what, otherwise, we shall, perhaps, see.” 

Lesley tried to nod, to hold herself calmly. But 
she found that she could do nothing, only turn about 
and retreat. Which was what Netta Graeme prob¬ 
ably intended. 

Netta, moving quietly to her room, smiled. She 
could claim that she was a true invincible! How 
many women in face of that situation would have 
held their own and beaten off the attack after having 
first envisaged the situation correctly? 

But those two things she had done. She had 
beaten off the attack; but she had seen the facts 


THE HOARDING 


225 


of the position—recognized them. That, ultimately, 
was the astonishing thing. In the swift reaction 
from that easy confidence of hers she yet was able, 
so efficient was her mentality, to be impressed with 
her own swiftness of judgment. At once she had 
believed that girl; and scarcely another woman but 
would have refused belief angrily, protestingly— 
scarcely another woman but would have repudiated 
Lesley’s claim. From complete confidence in one 
thing to an equal confidence in another thing she had 
passed in a flash. She was amazed at herself. But 
she was perfectly convinced of the absolute sanity 
of her judgment. 

And with time for reflection she found herself 
collecting evidence to support that girl’s claim. 
Lesley had been with her, when as it had seemed to 
herself, Coleton had shown a new persistence; and 
those roses. . . . Yes, they had been intended for 
Lesley. She recognized the truth now, and rather 
coldly admonished herself for her earlier credulity. 
But the depth of the wound was the greater because 
she had opposed no resistance to the blow when she 
knew it must fall. She had dropped her shield and 
let the oncoming knife pass home. And now? Now 
she grew a little pale thinking not only of what she 
had lost but of what she must now endure. She was 
troubled as one might be entering the torture cham¬ 
ber of an Inquisition—knowing enough of oneself 
to know how much one must sutler. She would have 
to sit still and treat Pain and Wretchedness and 
Humiliation as beloved guests—smiling upon them, 


226 


THE HOARDING 


feeding them, cherishing them. She perfectly rec¬ 
ognized that she would have to help the man. If 
what she had told Lesley was not the truth, if she 
had not on various earlier occasions sent Claude 
away and had him back upon her hands, she would 
now have to suffer him about her and accept his 
confidences. He would use her if he could use her, 
not merely as a social convenience, calling upon her 
to preserve certain obscure proprieties, but, if she 
knew anything of him, he would use her spiritually. 
He would still whisper to her, seek her confidence, 
look into her mind; and, reading her regrets, he 
would feed complacently, even happily, upon them; 
he would still expect her confessions as he expected 
those of all other women. 

Of course, as she assured herself, Lesley was only 
one in a succession of these women of his. Mar¬ 
riage? These men, these feminists, as they liked to 
call themselves, could speak of marriage as they 
could speak of love. Whether Coleton had spoken 
of marriage she was ready to doubt. And, even if 
he had, it would be merely the coin current in the 
kingdoms of simplicity and small things in which 
Lesley moved. It would merely indicate the char¬ 
acter of his judgment of Lesley; indeed, so she 
(finally) argued, if he spoke of marriage, by virtue 
of the paradox perceptible in the emotional reac¬ 
tions of that man there was indicated a certain 
intellectual patronage, a coming down to the girl’s 
level. So she argued—“fondly” argued. 

There would be much that she would have to 


THE HOARDING 


227 


endure. But not for always, not even for long, 
would she have to endure at that girl’s hands. He 
would desert her, whoever else he lied to; and prob¬ 
ably if she (Netta) was patient and maintained her 
poise she would have him suing again before long. 
Yes, on the whole she swung back to that less alarm¬ 
ing view of the situation. He had not necessarily 
intended all those earlier softnesses, those meetings, 
those passionate bestowings of hands and of roses for 
the mere girl. He had still been seeking her (Netta), 
and only by some temporary aberration had he set 
himself to conquering Lesley. If he won—and of 
course he had done that already, he always won— 
the time could not be far distant when he would be 
throwing away his winnings, the winnings being 
what they were. And then . . . yes, she must hold 
herself. 

An hour later Lesley, rather white and tense, 
came into the room. Netta rose, moved smilingly 
across, lifted her lips and kissed the girl. 

‘ 4 There. I am sorry I was so—so crude, dear, 
I want to say that I wish you to be very happy. 
I am sure you will be.” 

Lesley, who had seemed resolved, looked suddenly 
unsteady; but she held to what was presumably a 
purpose conceived in the disturbing loneliness of her 
own room. 

“I think, Netta, perhaps we had better—perhaps 
1 had better leave. I mean have rooms of my own.” 

Only for a bare second did Netta Graeme study 


228 


THE HOARDING 


in detached curiosity the other’s face and manner. 
In that brief, aloof consideration of her rival (what 
a word to let pass into her mind she told herself 
—melodrama!), in that brief contemplation she 
absorbed all the facts. Intuition, in which she 
certainly was not lacking, did the rest. 

Lesley, lying on her bed wildly scanning a situa¬ 
tion all sunrises and flashing colours, and filled with 
the high and wild sweet singing of many birds, had 
envisaged the world on which other eyes must then 
be looking—a wan world in which no bird sang. In 
that sere world, she had argued, loneliness was the 
only thing one wanted—could want; a gay visitant 
from the other sphere of existence could only 
jar. . . . Therefore she must go. . . . 

“My dear child, whatever for? Because I had 
the folly to misunderstand a situation that ought to 
have been plain enough? Unless you are moving 
from some motive of pleasing yourself.” 

“But I wasn’t, Netta. I was thinking of you. 

I felt I—I couldn’t-” 

6 6 Couldn’t stay here and feel that you were stand¬ 
ing in my way? Dear child, do you suppose that 
I really care so much for any man as I’ve learnt 
to care for this strange girl whose lot has come to 
be mixed with mine? You mustn’t go. I would find 
it intolerable without you.” 

“But the position, Netta, is a little-” 

“Absurd? Why, yes. Perhaps. But isn’t the 
absurdity of life one of its consolations? No, my 
dear, you shall not go. Not.” 




THE HOARDING 


229 


“But how are we to go on? Especially if-” 

“If he comes here?” Netta smiled. “Surely 
the situation is perfectly simple! I have only to 
evaporate, and under the warmth of his admiration 
for my friend I shall evaporate! Now don’t begin 
remembering all the silly things I said two hours 
ago. They weren’t the real me. I suppose it was 
really only a bit of—of pique.” 

“You mean that you really don’t care, Netta?” 

“Yes.” Her voice was perfectly steady. “Yes, 
that is really what I mean. I don’t care. Don’t 
think I say this with any bitterness. The matter is 
simply one about which I can’t feel excited. My 
only real feeling is raised when you say you want 
to leave me.” 

4 ‘ Then you mean you want me to stop even if-” 

“Of course. Even if anything—even if he comes 
here and stands solemnly waiting for me to dis¬ 
appear.” 

“Very well, Netta. If you’re sure—quite sure.” 

“I am sure—quite sure.” 

And so it was settled. 

Again Netta smiled, for again she had won. 
There she would be to watch; and always both the 
man and the girl would be conscious of her surveil¬ 
lance. Moreover—and here was a point of real 
value—his sense of her subtlety, of her mental re¬ 
moteness, would be enormously increased. For once 
he would not understand—he would come up against 
a woman whom he could not read. And that chal¬ 
lenge would ultimately be irresistible. Poor little 






230 


THE HOARDING 


Lesley! She could say poor little Lesley again, and 
she smiled to herself with satisfaction in her own 
power of recovery. Yes! in less than three hours 
she had so recovered that she could say again (the 
facts all being different) poor little Lesley! 

Poor little Lesley, with her naive speech, her di¬ 
rect projection of herself—how quickly would that 
man tire of her. She (Netta) knew enough of him 
to convince herself that his enthusiasm in that quar¬ 
ter would die out soon enough. And then . . . ? 


CHAPTER XVI 


I 

The really big advertising men had that club of 
theirs in Kingsway. Kingsway provided a kind of 
monument to the spirit of modern advertising. For 
five years there had been that great hoarding rising 
in the very heart of the greatest city in history—a 
hoarding that rose out of the ruins of a bygone 
civilization: a tawdry, sordid civilization that seemed 
to embody the spirit of the Present triumphing over 
the spirit of a poor defeated, undistinguished Past, 
a mean little Past of crowded thoroughfares—one 
of them Holywell Street, of unclean memory. 

Yes, and now on the spot had sprung up that 
hoarding covered with its lavish pictorial appeals 
to the Man-on-the-Top-of-the-Bus. Teas and cocoas, 
cheap tailoring and cheaper boots, branded under¬ 
clothing, and tonics—one and all they were sub¬ 
mitted to the consideration of that Emperor of the 
Little, that monarch by whose fiat trade lived or 
died. 

But because the Man-on-the-Top-of-the-Bus is 
necessarily a Gentleman in a Hurry, the appeals 
must be immediate. There is no time for the trav- 
eller-by to read; there is just time for him to see. 
And so he is shown an old fellow indescribably 

231 


232 


THE HOARDING 


bounding, if not precisely a bounder, upon the beach 
of Southness-super-Mare; or an anaemic factory 
woman standing beside a second woman whose face 
is visibly blossoming into life at the touch upon her 
lips of Kingford’s cocoa; or a young City clerk who, 
by visiting one of a thousand depots for “Crack- 
nail’s Clothing for the Classes and the Masses,” 
wears the air of one going even then to his club in 
St. James’s Street; or a scene in the House of Com¬ 
mons where, in reply to the inquiry of a diligent 
member as to the accuracy of a statement, a smart 
caricature of Mr. Speaker delivers himself of the 
judgment that “If it’s in Big View it’s true”; or, 
finally, there is that hero of the popular imagination, 
that romantic figure born of this present age, that 
noble, comic form of the bald ancient with the spring 
of a happy child who feeds on Horce—Horce Power. 
For a glimpse not only of his fat, pink, smiling, 
healthy face, red coat and tartan breeches, but of 
the brief lyric by which his achievements are cele¬ 
brated and the source of his power is distinguished, 
passing strangers have discovered that they must 
find time. And so they read and learn that 

High o’er the gate 
Jumps Happy Will; 

Since eating Horce 
He can’t keep still. 

Happy Will has entered into the lives of millions 
truly. He has brought into obscure existences the 
warmth and light of humour, he has become a vivid 


THE HOARDING 


233 


character somewhat in the sense in which Pickwick 
was a character; to his day and generation he has 
performed a service neither small nor mean. 

Behind that hoarding, with its celebration of the 
humanity of trade, with its reminders that a retail 
food, an ordinary two miles of an English coast-line, 
a bit of cloth—not only was something to be con¬ 
sidered bv all who must be fed or restored to health 
* 

or clothed, but something intimately bound up with 
a happiness in merely physical things, and with a 
world-traffic that went ten thousand miles beyond 
the area of this London. Even then in this place 
were rising the first stones of a building which 
should signify those outer reaches of a world whose 
parts were indeed bound together by just these com¬ 
mon things—teas and cocoas and clothes—which 
were signified upon the hoarding. 

In this quarter, then, was, properly, to be found, 
surely, a place where men could meet whose task it 
was each day to promote these traffics. Call them 
what you liked or they liked—publicity merchants, 
advertising agents, experts, consultants, advertising 
managers, canvassers—they were here, and here 
they found their natural home. 

You could meet them in the streets—Fleet Street, 
the Strand, or in the new thoroughfare trying to 
dress itself like New York and almost succeeding. 
There they went, easily the best-dressed men in a 
crowd not distinguished and, Fleet Street way, 
dingy and inky-looking. These men in morning 
coats for which Savile Row would not have blushed 


234 


THE HOARDING 


with shame, coats well-shaped and satisfying a final 
test of being free from sag in the shoulders—neat 
white slips inserted under the waistcoat, trousers 
cut on the most modern pattern and meticulously 
creased—these men were like butterflies flitting amid 
swarms of meaner, dingier insects. Those, too— 
and there were many—who affected a freer style of 
dress, “d.-b. lounges’’—as those of them who ‘‘han¬ 
dled” tailors’ “propositions” would have put it— 
were distinguishable from the dull, poorly clad pas¬ 
sengers whom you met carrying parcels to and from 
St. Paul’s Churchyard; from the bright-eyed 
“ story ” hunters out of Fleet Street in their indif¬ 
ferently tailored drab-coloured clothes; from the 
drearily dressed intellectuals of that same quarter 
who never, since the street began, cared a stroke of 
a pen for the clothes they wore. (Perhaps, as one 
of them wrote once in passionate defence, “because 
we have to dress down to the kind of offices in which 
we are expected to work.”) 

Yes, these advertising men supplied colour, dig¬ 
nity, even a mild splendour to ways otherwise ob¬ 
scure and dull enough. And so, very happily, here 
(“right here,” as one of them had learned from 
America to say) they had their club—the Proposi¬ 
tion Club—where they met for business and discus¬ 
sion of what they had begun to insist was a 
profession and not a trade. 

As was inevitable, their notions and predisposi¬ 
tions being what they were, the club-room was the 
achievement of a mind modern and artistic but in- 


THE HOARDING 


235 


stinctively utilitarian. There were men who, visit¬ 
ing the place from other worlds—journalists and 
others of their class, mere writers and artists— 
shuddered when nobody was looking. “Blatant”— 
that was a word one man had used; “A board-room 
—where’s the managing director?” had said an¬ 
other, and then, catching sight of Veem—the great 
Veem who “handled” (they all “handled” every¬ 
thing) the largest publicity “stunts” in the world— 
had added, “Why, of course.” 

Looking at the faces of these men, an observer 
got an impression of a certain uniformity in spite 
of the enormous physical contrasts. Facially they 
suggested the American type. They shaved clean 
and with particular care, not neglecting the back of 
the neck; they liked gold in their teeth, and you cer¬ 
tainly never saw a carious tooth in the head of one 
of them. They were, in their own speech, ‘ ‘ efficiency 
merchants,” and an unstopped tooth would have 
been the first mark of inefficiency. It was as though 
they were resolved that even the mere subsidiary 
forthshowings of themselves should demonstrate 
that completeness of purpose, that certainty that 
nothing had been neglected, which was instinct in 
them. Well-cared-for bodies, well-fed faces (“fed 
on the best,” as the farmers have it), well-tailored, 
and well-groomed, they gave you the idea that, in 
another phrase from that dictionary of theirs to 
which they went for all the words of their special¬ 
ized speech, they handled the “big stuff.” And 
their manners confirmed the report which their ap- 


236 


THE HOARDING 


pearance conveyed to yon. They talked like men 
who thought in terms of never less than four figures. 
They could tell stories, take and give a confidence, 
or look deep into the fire in mere silence—and yet do 
all with a carefully cultivated gesture, a certain 
ample air which inevitably impressed and almost as 
inevitably brought business. 

These men talked shop. The club was there for 
that purpose. But there were days set apart for 
talking shop in a general way, and here one after¬ 
noon you saw men dropping in to hear that new chap 
Boxrider. He had really put Beech’s on its feet 
again. There were men there who had hoped to 
see Beech go under with a consequent passing of the 
Kingford connexion to themselves. 

“But he’s only begun,” said Gowing, who man¬ 
aged the department for the “Evening Post,” to 
the great Veem—who was so big that he liked to 
hear everybody praised. (He had nobody to fear, 
and when you have nobody to fear you have leisure 
to love.) “He’s going a long way, is that fellow 
Boxrider—a very long way. I find, myself, that I 
have to get up before I go to bed to be up early 
enough for him, and yet the odd thing about him is 
that he isn’t a mere pouncer. He has an air of 
being reasonable. No, he’s not smooth. But he’s 
a knack of conjuring visions. We’d always been on 
the dignified tack, no block illustrations for our ad¬ 
vertising—as we didn’t let them into our news. 
Then he comes along. ‘ We’ve never done it,’ I say. 


THE HOARDING 


237 


‘Why not!’ he wants to know. ‘Why/ I answer, ‘it 
is a tradition of papers of our kind. We appeal to 
the upper middle-class. The trade which is done by 
our advertisers is almost all done in the West End 
and Kensington.’ ‘Well/ says he, ‘you’re wrong, 
and sooner or later your rival, the “St. Stephen’s 
Gazette,” will do what I want you to do. Then 
you’ll have to follow, and you’ll lose the credit which 
is always earned by the pioneer.’ ‘Why don’t you 
go to the “St. Stephen’s Gazette” people then?’ I 
said. ‘Because/ he answers, ‘I’ve been told, and 
I’ve made it my business to confirm the tale, that 
you have been selling nearly twice as many a night 
as they do. Only during the last few weeks they’ve 
been gaining on you. You come in with me.’ Well, 
as you know-” 

“He persuaded you. Yes. I think we all knew 
that you’d changed your line of business, though,” 
with a chuckle, “I didn’t guess he’d cajoled you 
into it.” 

“No, it isn’t cajolement. There’s no trickery 
about the fellow. That’s what is so odd. He’s really 
straight. He gets business because he’s straight. 
That’s what is so curious according to some people’s 
ideas.” By that last clause Gowing adroitly saved 
himself from the implication of being one of such 
people. “He seems able to think of a proposition 
which is really sound, really big; and then he simply 
puts it before you and it speaks for itself. He 
drives a bargain, of course. But you discover when 



238 


THE HOARDING 


you’ve gone into the proposition that it’s going to 
do something for you as well as for him. He’s got 
a good name, has that young man.” 

‘‘Then why don’t we have him giving us a paper 
on one of our Wednesdays?” suddenly demanded 
Veem. 

And that was how it came about that Boxrider 
was announced to speak on “Art on the Hoardings.” 

The young man himself was not displeased to 
oblige. Here was an acknowledgment that he was 
getting on. And his audience would include men 
who had enormous contracts to give out. (Kingford 
himself was to be there by invitation.) 

And so there he came, spoke with a certain fresh¬ 
ness and ease which pleased the older men while irri¬ 
tating his own contemporaries; and, arrived at his 
peroration, he was heard declaring— 

“The hoardings, gentlemen, are the poor man’s 
picture gallery. Art influences mind and morals. 
If you give the poor man, as some of you are doing, 
rotten art—by which I mean bad, cheap drawings— 
you’re giving him rotten morals. I’m not going to 
mention any particular atrocity, but you can see one 
by merely going outside and round the corner into 
the Strand. But Vm going to release a picture that 
will give you an idea of what really good art is-” 

“Your idea?” somebody interrupted. 

“No, sir. Not my idea merely. There is a stand¬ 
ard, and I claim the picture reaches the standard. 
It was good enough for the walls of the Academy.” 
(He got applause here. He had won that point—for 



THE HOARDING 


239 


like all business men, these advertisers have as much 
of that over-respect for the official recognitions of 
art or literature as they have for the young man 
who calls himself, if he wants to, B. A.). 

“Yes. Good art. That’s necessary. And your 
picture must be a fair statement of your claims. It’s 
not only dishonest, it’s stupid to put on the market 
(say) a feeble tonic and then show a world of faint¬ 
ing men and women transfigured by the stuff.” 

“There are plenty of such things—there have to 
be,” objected a young critic. 

“Yes,” said Boxrider, “there are. And I 
wouldn’t handle one of ’em with india-rubber gloves 
on. And as to their having to be—where’s the 
compulsion?” 

“Business.” 

“I disagree, sir. I claim I can do business for 
my clients and do it well. But there’s a better stunt 
than any that any of us can get up. There’s some¬ 
thing that fetches the people more quickly than we 
can ever hope to do, and that is value for money. 
You won’t beat that.” 

“And what about your new picture?” 

“Oh, that’s value for money!”—he looked across 
at Kingford and laughed—“and it advertises value 
for money. When you see it you’ll admit that, I 
think.” He looked suddenly at the man who twice 
had cut in. “Even Mr. Cosmos will admit that, I 
think. ’ ’ 

A smiling face, subtle and Oriental, with the inor¬ 
dinately bright eyes shining full upon the speaker, 



240 


THE HOARDING 


seemed to consider, weigh, and measure. A minute 
later Boxrider had left the little platform and the 
meeting had broken up. 

It was twenty minutes later that he was making 
his way to the street when he heard steps behind 
him. 

44 Ah, Boxrider!” said a voice. 

Boxrider shrugged his shoulders. He didn’t like 
Cosmos. He had always avoided the man. He 
could remember a time only a year ago when Cosmos 
had no use for him, pointedly ignored him. 

There had been a change since then. Boxrider had 
something to give, and Cosmos was always looking 
for people with something to give. 

He hurried down the steps now, spruce and with 
that slow subtle smile which he reserved for those 
from whom he wished to take. 

44 May I have a word with you, Boxrider?” 

44 Why, yes.” 

4 4 Well, then, look here. What about this new 
Kingford stunt of yours? I hear you’re putting 
your shirt on it—for romantic reasons.” 

Boxrider turned full upon him. 44 You think your¬ 
self funny, don’t you, Cosmos? Well, I don’t think 
you are. See?” 

Cosmos’ eyes glinted, but he contented himself 
with a nod and a smile. 44 Yes, I see. But don’t dis¬ 
tress yourself, my dear friend. I want to talk busi¬ 
ness. This Kingford affair. What about taking my 
front page—on a contract.” 


TH . HOARDING 


241 


“Nothing doing.*’ 

“Why not? Kingfords used to take our space 
regularly. Look here, Boxrider, I know there’s no 
good in saying come and have a drink. You’re not 
that kind of man.” 

“No,” said Boxrider with an ironic smile. “No. 
I don’t think it would be much good in your asking 
me to come and have a drink.” 

“All the same, why don’t we seem to do busi¬ 
ness?” 

Boxrider had halted. He had the air a man has 
who proposes to end an interview to which he is the 
unwilling party. 

“Do you really want to know why we don’t do 
business, Cosmos?” 

“Yes, I do.” 

“Then I’ll tell you. It’s because you charge for 
a circulation of five hundred thou, a day, and I don’t 
believe you’ve got one-half that number. You say 
you always used to do business with Kingford. I 
dare say you did. But you’re not going to any more. 
It’s my business to look after the interests of my 
clients, and I’m not going to waste their money.” 

“You’re not, eh?”—a darkness had come into the 
face of Cosmos though he smiled still—“you’re not, 
eh? You refuse to accept the figures which I’ve 
shown myself perfectly willing to give you in con¬ 
fidence ? ’ ’ 

“Yes, I refuse. And that’s why. I refuse because 
they are given 4 in confidence.’ When you see fit to 
publish a chartered accountant’s certificate of sales 


242 


THE HOARDING 


you can give me a call. Till then, as I’ve said, 
there’s nothing doing. And good day to you.” 

So that the other could not hold him a moment 
longer in talk he set off at once. For a moment 
it seemed as if Cosmos would detain him. But he 
was well into his stride, and a moment later, reach¬ 
ing the Strand, he was still unmolested. 

His humour certainly was not one of the best. 
Cosmos always irritated him; but what angered him 
most was the consciousness that he had shown irri¬ 
tation—that the fellow had the power to make him 
show irritation. Of course he had been impertinent 
—grossly so. There was a story going about . . . 
That picture ... oh, yes, he could imagine the 
character of the story. A girl. . . . 

He didn’t feel inclined to go back to the office. He 
wanted to rid himself of that sense of irritation with 
which Cosmos had so lavishly provided him; and, 
like most Londoners with a design to win freedom 
of mind, he turned towards the Embankment. 

The bosom of such a river as the Thames or Mer¬ 
sey offers a spectacle healing and refreshing. The 
sight of it suggests Access—access to whatever the 
wide world has to offer by way of comfort to the 
troubled heart and restoration to the weary spirit. 
‘ 4 There go the ships! ” Yes, and with them goes the 
mind made quick and stirred to new adventure by 
that truly inviting spectacle. Those ships with their 
promise of delivery into the freedom of oceans di¬ 
vided from oceans by lands where men lived their 


THE HOARDING 


243 


troubled lives; those ships with yet their hints of 
an ultimate landing upon the little quays of remote 
places of the world—yes, those ships draw us away 
out of ourselves and into wider liberties. Boxrider, 
a little unskilled in disentangling his own emotions, 
a little conscious of the mystery of his own psychol¬ 
ogy, yet knew because before he had experienced 
the value of the sight of the river. 

His calm recovered, he began, as his way was here, 
to dream. The buildings opposed to him from the 
south side of the river, to his thinking, offered a 
spectacle of dignity, even of distinction; for without 
being an artist, he had the mind to see that whatever 
most clearly presents the idea of the thing for which 
it stands has beauty; and that, therefore, these 
shabby warehouses, with the dingy little lighters 
swinging below them, make a truer picture of the 
thing which they signify than would a newly set up 
pile of granite and plate glass. It was made clear 
to him that what men called business was no mere 
detail of life, but an essential quality in Life’s real¬ 
ity—something that ran through it. He had won¬ 
dered sometimes before why so many men, the busi¬ 
ness of the day over, felt that they must find some 
occupation—something they called a “hobby”—“to 
take them out of themselves,” that is, out of that 
area of consciousness in which their business was 
present with them. 

To him, Trade—first the setting, and then the 
maintaining in motion of the springs of commerce, 


244 


THE HOARDING 


was an endless preoccnpation. Money? No, he did 
not want money—that is, money was not a primary 
good. 

What he wanted, what he got, was a part in one 
of those great games going on in the many sections 
of life’s playgrounds. He was playing a game, and 
he let his mind go on running upon that game. Golf ? 
Golf did not attract him; it was merely a feeble 
shadow of the great spirit of competition moving 
in the bigger game. Playing golf as a distraction 
in the midst of the game in which he was involved 
would be like an England player at Lords running 
from the field in order to play halma in a corner 
of the pavilion. 

And idling here (idling? Well, using the term as 
some detached observer, watching him, might have 
used it), his mind still ran on visions of some com¬ 
mercial supremacy. He knew himself to be in one 
of those moods in which he conceived of new things. 
He always liked this Embankment, too, because of 
the quickness of its life. The genius of London hav¬ 
ing set up many narrow ways, and altering them 
little to conserve the new, growing, and highly vig¬ 
orous traffic of these latter times, thought again 
when there was the Embankment to build; and so, 
to-day, only in the Mall does the busy life of London 
travel as quickly as it does along the Embankment. 
The trams are unimaginative enough, they live per¬ 
petually in a groove; but all the petrol vehicles, even 
the dingiest and most ancient, seem, when they reach 
the Embankment, to wake up. ‘ 4 Hello! ’ 9 they seem 


THE HOARDING 


245 


to cry, “now for a sprint. I never had a chance till 
now, but I see myself doing something really good 
to-day. So here goes.” 

Taxis and drapers’ vans went by in flashes. And 
now, while he went slowly upon his way, a small, 
compact, smooth-running van shot past and he read 
the golden sign of the “Evening Times.’’ Evidently 
the six-thirty was out. He had always liked these 
newspaper vans best of all. They seemed to sig¬ 
nify, by their speed, the very genius of the Press. 
News, and News against Time. A ruler might be 
killed in the hills of India while he (Boxrider) was 
having tea there in Fleet Street, and he need only to 
dawdle a little and then to come out here upon the 
Embankment to know what had happened eight 
thousand miles away. . . . His satisfaction in the 
experience of seeing that van to-night kept him for 
a moment from appreciating the message of the con¬ 
tents bill—a message which he had, nevertheless, 
subconsciously collected. But now the letters on the 
sheet hanging behind the almost vanished car began 
to burn out before his mind: 

“Our greatest Courtenay for America.” 

He considered the words gravely and certainly 
without any active impulse to a conclusion. . . . 
Courtenay—held to be greater than Gainsborough! 
. . . Courtenay , , . America . . . yes . . . 

II 

He did not think any more about Courtenay. His 


246 


THE HOARDING 


mind had flown back to another artist—a living 
artist—with long, brown fingers. . . . 

He did not think any more about Courtenay till, 
diving into the Underground at Westminster, he 
bought an evening paper. It was then that he got 
the “story”; and from the “story” it appeared that 
the picture was only possibly going to America. It 
was to be offered for sale. 

A journalist looking for a story had found one 
here. “Keep the Picture,” he began to shout until, 
presently, he made England shout the refrain. But 
in the meantime he was shouting in the ear of 
Boxrider. 

It is highly probable, indeed, that in those two in¬ 
telligences now brought into contact—that of the 
writer and the reader—it was Boxrider’s which 
dominated. His was the originating mind, the mind 
which envisaged a new creation, a sudden swift pos¬ 
sibility; which was first expectant and then confident 
of some new reality. What had before been mere 
print passing into Boxrider’s mind, took on vitality 
and became alive. 

“Courtenay’s Greatest”—a bold caption. To the 
first, the journalist, there was here something which 
he had been taught was a treasure more precious 
than the gold which could buy it. So he had been 
taught and so he believed. To the other, however, 
the thing was to be considered in terms far other— 
in terms of his own construction. Somebody had 
once called a new world into existence to redress the 
balance of the old. But here was a man ready to 


THE HOARDING 


247 


take from the old world a thing of beauty and make 
it a torch in the service of a hastening new world, 
in too much of a hurry to see what it must neverthe¬ 
less be forced to see . . . unless something great 
enough could be held before them. Why not the 
greatest—even Courtenay’s greatest? 


CHAPTER XVII 


I 

Boxrider had fixed a day for the “release” (he 
liked this new lingo of the new commerce) of the 
Kingford picture; but of that he had said nothing 
to Lesley. She had returned the proof he had sent 
her with scarcely a comment. But that idea which 
had been filling his mind (to his own astonishment) 
was now beginning to be a spring to his actions. He 
would seek her out. . . . Yes, and the release of the 
picture gave him an excuse for doing that. 

He found the street—marvelling a little at a cer¬ 
tain poignancy of sentiment which he discovered in 
himself as he observed again the surroundings of his 
approach. He realized this much, of course—that 
what he saw—this mere street (as once he could have 
called it), the grey stone doorway of those “man¬ 
sions”—had never been seen by him in any but a 
mood of excitement. Even when first he had come 
here he had come in pursuit of an unknown who 
could give him something of true value to his job— 
something which, delivered to his hands, afforded 
him a chance to achieve. And he had gone away 
with a vision of her. And with that vision, twice 
\ since, he had returned. 

Perhaps, too, even on that first occasion he had 

248 


THE HOARDING 


249 


had a premonition; did men get these things ? But, 
whether or no, here he came again with the vision 
before him moving him now with no disguise from 
that once over-alert consciousness of his. 

He wanted to see her. Her picture? For the 
first time he acknowledged that the picture had 
ceased to be directly relevant, important. 

But when he met the eyes—quiet, curious, search¬ 
ing—of Netta Graeme, he was for the first time 
vividly conscious of what his mood must have been 
and now was. 

“Miss Lesley Senior? She is out,” with a smile 
which he did not understand. “She isn’t at home 
a great deal now—naturally.” 

“Naturally?” 

“Oh! I mean naturally now that there is a man 
—shall I say an official man?” 

“Official man. You mean she’s going to-” 

“Going to be Mrs. Claude Coleton—if one need 
put things like that. Yes.” 

“Claude Coleton? The man who-” 

“Writes novels which I’m sure you would never 
read, Mr. Boxrider? Yes. But here I am keeping 
you on the doorstep. Won’t you come in?” 

“No, thank you. I think I’ll be going on. I came 
really about the picture.” 

“Oh, yes! I don’t think, though, I’d bother Miss 
Senior about the picture, if I were you, Mr. Box- 
rider. She’s rather—well—rather against that par¬ 
ticular picture. Claude—Mr. Coleton—has been ad¬ 
monishing her.” 





250 


THE HOARDING 


41 ‘What’s he got against it?” burst in Boxrider. 
As soon as there was a man he could deal. It was 
these women. . . . 

“Oh, don’t ask me, Mr. Boxrider!” She was ob¬ 
serving him closely, doubtless enjoying so many 
things which her trained intelligence (trained, that 
is, to work in this particular field) could measure 
and appreciate. She had seen at once the sudden 
modification of manner, the turning aside of the on¬ 
rush which had been visible in him as he had first 
taken in her hints. Malicious? No. She had noth¬ 
ing against Boxrider—she could not possibly have 
had anything. Perhaps, indeed, there was already 
forming in her mind an idea of another kind—an 
idea in which he was presented to her as something 
far other than the objective of some small part of 
her malice. 

But she did not want him standing there thrusting 
on her the defence of Claude Coleton, and when he 
demanded further to know ‘ 4 What is the use of going 
on raising objections? She’s sold the picture; I’ve 
refused to let her withdraw, and the thing will be 
out at once,” she merely smiled. 

“You have not been in love yet, Mr. Boxrider,” 
she said, with bright, new malice all the same. ‘ 6 But 
lovers are kittle kattle. Their tongues run easily to 
criticism! And Mr. Coleton, you know, rather 
specializes in condemnation of your profession. But 
won’t you come in?” 

“No.” He said now, quite definitely, that he 
would not, and he turned from her in something that, 


THE HOARDING 


251 


on his face, usually so smooth and alert, looked like 
a confusion. 

He went away quickly, wiping out memories as 
well as he could, trying to restore these streets in his 
mind to what he conceived to be their normal air— 
their appearance apart from his special conscious¬ 
ness of them. He was like one who enters a room 
empty after a festivity and who seeks to reduce it 
to the commonplace of order again. 

So there was another man! He was inclined to 
reprove an incomparable stupidity in himself in that 
he had never troubled himself with the reflection that 
there was likely to be another man—perhaps many 
such. Because he had never thought of that dark 
possibility, he had never envisaged a moment such 
as this. He had been content to go forward to what 
Fancy had suggested would be a happy climax, and 
to await the arrival of that climax with a proper 
patience. It was thus that he had always awaited 
the successive climaxes to events of his quite or¬ 
dinary career. 

But now he blamed himself. Oddly enough, he 
began by condemning himself merely for inefficiency 
in the conduct of what, as he now discovered, was an 
essential business of his life. Love! Why he didn’t 
know that he had ever consciously spun the word in 
his mind. He went to see this girl, and when he was 
not with her he thought of her—though, as he as¬ 
sured himself, in no particular character. He was 
conscious that she drew him, but he had never con¬ 
sidered in what he was involved when he let himself 


252 


THE HOARDING 


respond to her attraction. And because he had been 
careless he found himself suddenly involved in diffi¬ 
culties that were the greater because they were pre¬ 
sented so suddenly. 

He had mechanically begun his journey back to 
the office, and presently was walking the Embank¬ 
ment and meeting the evening tide of human kind 
flowing out of the City to the south and west. He 
was, he might have reflected, going against the cur¬ 
rent. 

He turned at last towards the Strand, and from 
mere habit his eye travelled across the thoroughfare 
to the great hoarding. He saw there things familiar, 
in legend and colour and design; and then it was 
that he discovered something new—something that 
stood out—a picture that he recognized with a flame 
of excitement and that drew him at once across the 
street until he could stand close enough to read the 
name of the painter: “Lesley Senior.” 

Then he stood there, his eyes shining, his heart 
beating in an excitement that he refused to ac¬ 
knowledge more than half explicable, looking up at 
her picture. And having seen her picture, a moment 
later he saw something else. 


n 

Brightly, lightly, maliciously, Netta Graeme, hat¬ 
ing to speak, had spoken truth. Coleton had moved. 
(Coleton himself, still a little confused in spite of the 


THE HOARDING 


253 


subtlety even of bis happiness, would probably have 
said that lie had not moved, but had been moved.) 

As for Lesley, the young woman was immensely 
impressed by the splendour of her lot. There may 
have been moments of uncertainty: these moments 
had passed. She was happily assured. She saw 
Claude Coleton in terms of a new conception—the 
conception of a great and distinguished figure in the 
history of his time, one who certainly came down to 
her, who most astonishingly was ready to be inter¬ 
ested in her and to give her his devotion. But there 
can be no doubt of this that, being woman, the dis¬ 
covery that Netta Graeme had bestowed her heart 
in that quarter and had believed the man hers gave 
Claude a wonderfully enhanced value in Lesley’s 
eyes. Of Netta, with her rather flower-like beauty, 
her daintiness, she had always been a little envious. 
Considering herself in confidential mirrors she 
would sometimes turn a little conscious of some ob¬ 
scurely suggested homeliness in her figure: how un¬ 
gainly, immature, she must look beside Netta. 

And now she had been preferred to Netta! True, 
her satisfaction had been checked and almost turned 
as a result of that first encounter with the other 
woman. Her happiness seemed blotted; between her¬ 
self and the sunshine suddenly beginning to pour 
down into her life the gloom of that other had seemed 
to rise like a bank of vapour. She was numbed, her 
world darkened; but only for those first two hours 
in which she had been woefully conscious of Netta 
in the character of the disappointed. Coming back 


254 


THE HOARDING 


and ready to yield, to be generous, she had been 
relieved (and perhaps a little chagrined!) by the 
other woman’s calm. 

She tried now, did poor Lesley, to interpret her¬ 
self to herself—with the inevitable result. Like 
every woman engaged upon that perilous task she 
discovered in herself the most astonishing paradoxes 
—or rather a regular series of them. There she was 
rejoicing in her victory, but troubled because she 
had won it at the expense of Netta’s unhappiness, 
but troubled again because Netta’s unhappiness 
seemed to be vanishing, but troubled once again be¬ 
cause the fact that she was troubled because Netta 
was not more unhappy disclosed in herself some¬ 
thing obscure, even terrifying, something at which 
she shuddered and that she tried to veil. 

She ran away from herself at last—into (meta¬ 
phorically) the arms of Claude Coleton. For that 
refuge remained: he, this man whom women loved, 
loved her. 

“Poor Lesley.” Netta had called her, meaning 
blind Lesley. But she was not as blind as that. 
There were many things that she could see. His 
hold upon women, for instance. And that hold being 
what it was, she half-envisaged the likelihood of 
there being a certain reciprocity. That, indeed, 
seemed inevitable. He could not take without giving 
something: there was an exchange in these matters 
as in everything else. But she discovered, with the 
eye of the woman loved and beginning herself to 
love, that in her presence the man could not main- 


THE HOARDING 


255 


tain his detachment. In spite of himself she did draw 
him, and tasting that power she wanted draughts of 
it. She, the demure, waiting rather breathlessly! 
She was ready to do much more now, and she as¬ 
tonished herself by the character she discovered in 
herself. 

Again here was astonishment that there could 
have been a moment when her will was fluid enough 
to allow her to surrender the picture when Claude 
would have had her refuse to do so at all costs. 
Interpreting herself busily now, she decided that she 
only began to stand definitely for Claude’s preju¬ 
dices when a certain quite clear development had 
taken place. His lavish attention she had appre¬ 
ciated, but it inspired her with no definite intent in 
relation to him; she even saw herself merely one of 
a number of women in whom he showed interest. 
But that sudden perception of something in his eyes 
as he looked at her, that discovery that there was 
a moment in which this man could forget himself, 
forsake his pose, come to her feet, while it overcame 
her with an astonishment momentarily numbing to 
her senses, wrought in her a change which seemed 
to go to the roots of her being. He had been to her 
an objective personality: now because, for a mo¬ 
ment, he had looked at her with eyes of love—had 
shown himself dependent, had flung himself rather 
than looked down—she had drawn him within her¬ 
self. The objective personality was now, for her, a 
subjective one: he was part of her experience. 
Whether for ever she would love him or not, at the 


256 


THE HOARDING 


moment lie loved her, loved her as any other man 
might have loved her. She was his woman. And 
being that, suddenly her spirit went out against a 
world that could withstand him. 

Hence against the man who had tricked (her word 
now for that transaction of the picture) her into per¬ 
petration of her offence against the newly beloved 
Claude, she cherished a sufficiently warm enmity. 


Ill 

She was to meet Claude to-day on his return from 
a week in Scotland. House-parties—he rather af¬ 
fected house-parties, “with breaths of London in 
between,’’ as he put it. Now it was to be “with 
breaths of you.” He meant to take her up the river. 

She had agreed to meet him at Paddington, and 
when she came into the big, cool station, crowded 
with West of England holiday makers, she saw him 
standing by the bookstall. Most men of his profes¬ 
sion, she imagined, gravitated to bookstalls in rail¬ 
way stations. For a moment she had opportunity 
to consider him. Aes, there was that Grecian beauty 
of outline which had first attracted her—a man 
physically splendid, no less than intellectually. She 
told herself—as young women, mentally conditioned 
as she, will do—that she looked at him with perfect 
detachment and yet found him better than anyone 
else in the seen or imaginable world. 

Well, but now suddenly he discovered her, and im- 


THE HOARDING 


257 


mediately a certain static quality of pose left him; 
his melancholy eyes shone with the quick feeling 
within him as he came forward, clearly a lover with 
all other women forgotten. 

“My dear, how admirably punctual. We can go 
along to the train now if you like; though I’ve got 
seats and have wired for a punt to be ready and 
for lunch to be put on board.’’ 

She smiled. All women who are forced by circum¬ 
stances to do things for themselves like nothing so 
much when opportunity offers as to have a man who 
does things for them; they have then a sense of well¬ 
being, of a proper conformation of their life to the 
plan of Nature. 

“I’m sure you’ve arranged everything. You know 
I can’t imagine you forgetting anything or getting 
into—a muddle.” 

He smiled. He was pleased, and, oddly enough, 
perhaps the pleasure wasn’t complacent: it was 
genuinely the pleasure of the lover gratified that the 
woman of his devotion approved him. 

“No, I don’t think I’m likely to forget. It is, as a 
matter of fact, a little pride of mine that I’m effi¬ 
cient.” He looked round the station suddenly. “I 
always think that a terminus station like this after 
a few years gets a sense of the character of the 
particular country it serves. I don’t mean merely 
that here you’ll hear good Devonshire spoken, while 
at Euston you hear Lancashire, but that there is, 
or has become, such a general sense of—say of Corn¬ 
wall, that you can smell its sea, look into its coves, 


258 


THE HOARDING 


scent its moors, merely by standing and half closing 
the eyes.” 

She liked to hear him talk. She wasn’t in the mood 
to-day to examine the texture of the talk itself or to 
ask herself whether it was a degree too 44 literary.” 
As a matter of fact, the man, as one of his intimates 
had once put it, 4 4 did rather try to talk like an occa¬ 
sional essay.” 

4 4 Tell me where to find myself now, ’ ’ she said, pre¬ 
paring to close her eyes. 

He was about to answer, when, looking above her 
head behind, he paused with a motion of distaste. 

44 Let us go to our train,” he said, rather suddenly. 
44 Just when one is ready to dream, one has to submit 
to have a sight like that thrust upon one. Railway 
companies are, I suppose, commercial undertakings, 

but-” She had turned quickly, almost in alarm, 

to discover what had troubled him, and found that it 
was a distant wall on which hung pictorial advertise¬ 
ments. Very slightly she coloured. She perfectly 
understood what was in his mind, but she said noth¬ 
ing, merely following him through the gate and tak¬ 
ing her seat in the train. 

In a moment or two, however, he recovered his 
mood; and the train, moving out, took with it not 
only a sufficiently complacent lover, but one with no 
thought for the more paltry annoyances of fife. 

IV 

In the train on the return journey she found 



THE HOARDING 


259 


enough leisure to tell herself that there were days 
that shone glorious for ever across the wastes of 
memory, and that here was one such day. She leant 
back, half-luxuriating in her possession of him. 
Possession: she made that word definitely appro¬ 
priate to the case. He had shown himself the lover; 
and if an over-complete lover, she was in no mood 
to criticize or examine the causes of this experience 
of him. She could even value the fact of that ex¬ 
perience and delight in a conception of this man as 
a lover turning from all others to herself. 

Quitting the station they turned southwards, so as 
to walk through the Park. There was a mild evening 
breeze blowing, meeting and touching their faces as 
they moved on slowly beside the dried turf where so 
many of the weary and broken now lay sleeping or 
resting. 

“We are surrounded by who knows what spiritual 
tragedies,” he murmured, waving a hand towards 
the men lying everywhere about them on the parched 
grass. She was in no mood to think him sententious, 
and the quick raising of her eyes to his, in absorbed 
and therefore undisguised admiration, encouraged 
him. He seldom lacked such encouragement. As 
long as he could discover in her that quality of pas¬ 
sive devotion to himself, he could himself maintain 
some kind of passivity. And passivity permitted 
detachment. He could be critical even of his own 
speech. “I am sometimes ready to turn and run.” 
He wished a moment later he had said “flee” as 
connoting a suggestion of greater dignity. “I feel 


260 


THE HOARDING 


I cannot bear to see them, to read them, to imagine 
from what place they have come and to what they 
go back. And yet one knows not how to do anything 
for them.” 

“I suppose,’’ said Lesley, feeling nevertheless a 
little uneasy in thus being forced to display her 
meagre economics, “that what they want is better- 
paid work. They wouldn’t then be so terribly en¬ 
closed by their surroundings.” 

He held up a hand. “No,” he declared, “I am 
against this idea of helping these people by giving 
better wages.” He liked to hear himself in his 
character of director of social studies. Moreover, 
he had subtle approval for the capacity he was able 
still to discover in himself for a deliberate suspen¬ 
sion of the function of the active lover. 

When he might be touching the strings of emotion 
in this girl, here he was addressing himself to her 
intellect—or at least (for he did not choose to think 
that at any time she was capable of confining her 
relation to himself to the character of an intellectual 
relationship) to an emotionalized intellect: a mind 
warmed by love the better to take the impressions 
he gave. 

“I am,” he continued, and there was nobody to 
raise a laugh by crying “Pontiff”—“I am utterly 
against higher wages as a cure. Such wages would 
not improve them. It is not their pockets but their 
minds that want filling. I was talking to a man at 
the club. ‘We want a trade boom,’ he said. ‘Pos- 


THE HOARDING 


261 


sibly,’ I answered. ‘I wonder.’ For really, such a 
boom isn’t an unmixed blessing. I apologize for the 
cliche, let me substitute an ‘unimpaired blessing.’ 
Such a boom means ostentation, vulgarity, the ob¬ 
trusion of trade; and I would do much to retard that 
obtrusion. We cannot go for a single walk to-day 
without being reminded that somebody wants to sell 
something. Shops? I don’t mean shops, I don’t 
mind shops—provided that they don’t advertise 
themselves in the way they do to-day. I don’t even 
mind patent foods and things of that kind—provided 
their manufacturers are content to sell them across 
a counter to such as want these things and know 
about them. ’ ’ She might have asked how they were 
to know without being told; but in her present mood 
of giving she was in no condition to put such ques¬ 
tions to-night. 

The question, all the same, may have written itself 
down in some corner of her mind. At the moment, 
in a mood to idealize, she was content to listen to 
his words with every impulse to criticism suspended; 
her mind lay idle as, earlier in the day, their boat 
had lain in the midst of the stream while they had 
absorbed beauty and atmosphere. Whether she was 
entirely unaware of the fact of her present passivity 
is to be questioned: yet she walked beside him with 
no challenges on her lips, and he went on: 

“The old days when each man worked for himself, 
when there was no co-operation—those must have 
been the best days, the days of true happiness. I’m 


262 


THE HOARDING 


sure of it. Days when there were no trade booms 
and nobody wanted any; and when there were no 
advertisements. ’ ’ 

Even at that she scarcely jibbed. She could not 
believe the words to be aimed deliberately at her: 
she let them go. 

They had walked on until they found themselves 
in the Mall. By what means impulses are directed 
will not be discussed here. She was never prepared 
to discuss why she said, suddenly, 4 ‘Let us go on. 
Let us cross the city boundary. I love London at this 
time of year and at this hour. I think you really 
catch her colouring.” He frowned at an artist’s 
thought while approving her wish to keep him. 
“And we could easily come back along the Embank¬ 
ment right to Chelsea.” 

He agreed, and they continued to walk east, con¬ 
tinued . . . which means that these two marched 
inevitably towards a point involving an experience 
which, to possess the special character that actually 
it was to have, involved another than themselves. 

Coincidence? We must dismiss some fairly useful 
prepossessions from our minds before we subscribe 
to the use of such a word. Upon occasion a mind 
will provide the impetus for another mind and pro¬ 
vide it at the appropriate moment, that is, the mo¬ 
ment calculated to be the right moment—the zero— 
for starting a movement which shall lead to a certain 
conjunction. And so here went the pair towards 
that inevitable scene (inevitable in the terms, at 
least, of a perfectly respectable philosophy). 


THE HOARDING 


263 


Passing under the Admiralty Arch and coming 
into Charing Cross, they paused. To right of them, 
in Whitehall, like a picture framed, save for the top¬ 
most side of the frame, by the ascending darkness 
of the street, stood out a glimpse of the Clock Tower 
with Big Ben, not yet luminous, above. The rele¬ 
vance of that reminder of the fact of Time must 
inevitably be suggested in the circumstance that it 
was precisely at one certain moment that a conjunc¬ 
tion of three must happen at a particular spot. But 
these two must first move a little further east. And 
so into a Strand shuttered save where here and there 
a late-keeping tradesman still asked for business, 
they moved slowly, meeting the flagging human cur¬ 
rent which still ran out of the City. 

Coleton found himself ready for sentiment. A 
permissive sentiment was, he always tried to tell 
himself, the only kind which he could experience. He 
allowed sentiment to play. But, equally, he could 
forbid. 

“It was near here,” he began to murmur, “that 

. . . you first made me feel-” He let the words 

fade. 

She nodded and smiled and nodded again. The 
Women’s Reform Club was quite near. There had 
been that escort of his to the car. Even then she’d 
known. 

Women in love attain a certain interlude of de¬ 
tachment sometimes when they come again to the 
spot where first they believe they convinced them¬ 
selves that the man “showed signs.” 



264 


THE HOARDING 


“Yes,” she smiled again. “Yes, Claude.” (She 
didn’t say “Claude, dear.” She never said “Claude, 
dear.” She thought that probably endearments did 
not come naturally with her.) “Yes, I remember.” 

“If you do, can you doubt how I remember?” 

He liked the sound of that. He must put it into 
his next book! Would he remember the words till 
he got home or must he make a note now? . . . Yet 
all the same there was something spontaneous. 

She smiled again—happily; and then a moment 
later grew fearful . . . yet for no reason whatever 
that she could discover. It was only now that they 
had come within a pace of the Strand-Kingsway 
junction and of the great hoarding. . . . And Box- 
rider, looking away from the picture of Lesley 
Senior’s “Waiting,” discovered that there was 
something else for him to see. And Lesley, standing 
back suddenly, uneasily, disturbed by that grim con¬ 
frontation, as it seemed to her in her present mood, 
of her sin against her lover if not against Love itself, 
in stepping back and looking up with swift depre¬ 
cating gesture, became aware of that very man who, 
according to her new conceiving of the circum¬ 
stances, was responsible for her black offence. She 
looked with a sudden air of distaste, nodded coldly 
by way of a bow (to which he responded with a step 
in her direction), and then turned to Claude Coleton 
as if not only to deprecate his criticism but to do 
two other things—claim his safe conduct out of this 
place, and stress her relation to him before the ob¬ 
servant eyes of that other. 


THE HOARDING 


265 


Coleton, who had seen the picture and had, visibly, 
disapproved, looked at Boxrider in some curiosity. 
He had no notion who this rather determined and 
somewhat crude-looking young man was. He did not 
particularly want to know at that moment; he cer¬ 
tainly did not desire acquaintance: some picture 
dealer perhaps, or some other individual concerned 
with that absurd existence from which, as he hoped, 
he had rescued this girl of his (of his—he was al¬ 
ways and inevitably proprietorial). He certainly had 
no notion of the precise character in which the young 
man’s relationship stood to Lesley. And he was for 
moving off—even though he could not forbear an 
indirect and comminatory shrug and a word of com¬ 
ment, as his eye considered the picture. 

“It is at least pleasant to think, my dear, that this 
is the last occasion . . . though I shall quite dread 
the sight of a London hoarding for quite a long time 
to come.” 

On that note of rather feminine protest he was 
leading her away when Boxrider came forward. 

“Good evening, Miss Senior. I hope you like it.” 

He spoke as if moved by some queer dominating 
emotion which he had not succeeded in controlling— 
perhaps had not tried to control. 

Coleton paused, considered the other up and down, 
and with what may have been intended to appear an 
insolent curiosity; then he glanced at the girl as if 
demanding that she should clear herself of an ob¬ 
scure complicity in the affairs of this young man. 
Appealed to thus by both men, Lesley spoke. 



266 


THE HOARDING 


“If you really ask my opinion, Mr. Boxrider, I 
will give it—though. I should think you know that 
I sold my picture and was sorry afterwards. I am 
not pleased to see it there, and I wish you—you 
hadn’t persuaded me.” 

“What? Is this the—the gentleman?” Coleton 
assisted the impression he wished to convey by that 
artistic little pause before the use of the substantive. 

“It is Mr. Boxrider, yes—Mr. Coleton.” She 
made this most unhappily circumstanced introduc¬ 
tion. 

Coleton smiled. “Ah, yes, Miss Senior is the vic¬ 
tim of the enterprise of your trade, or perhaps you 
call it—profession?” 

“7 don’t,” said Boxrider bluntly. He was direct 
enough, though his mind was searching—asking for 
explanations. This big, bland fellow, an affected ass 
for all his romantic air, with his assumption of 
proprietorship—and that girl submitting! 

Coleton? The writer. He had tried to read his 
books, and really the fellow looked like them—hand¬ 
some, yes, but not virile, strong. 

“Mr. Boxrider bought my picture, Claude, quite 
fairly and I cannot now complain. ’ ’ 

“Complain? Certainly not! Why should you 
complain, when you find yourself hung on the line 
on—what do they call it?—the poor man’s picture 
gallery? Mr. Boxrider has surely performed a 
double service. He has enriched the mind of the 
million by presenting it with your picture and he 
has afforded you an opportunity of touching the 


THE HOARDING 


267 


democracy. Mr. Boxrider, indeed, seems to be a 
highly beneficent person.” 

Boxrider had never heard anybody talk like that 
before. Some remoter curiosity within him was 
genuinely aroused to study the form of the speech. 
Without having the language of criticism he found 
in effect its irony feeble, the mind behind it shallow. 
It certainly was not an impressive form of address; 
and yet quite clearly it was meant to be. 

These were remoter considerations though; the 
immediate idea in his mind was one which directly 
opposed itself first of all to the fact that the man 
should be here with Lesley at all, wearing that in¬ 
sufferable air of ownership. It is curious, by the 
way, how Coleton contrived in a few moments to in¬ 
crease the effectiveness of himself in the character 
of proprietor. 

“We have now seen the finished work, and the 
National Gallery—I suppose, though, Mr. Boxrider, 
you would say, ‘Why drag in the National Gallery V 
And really if you said that, I think I should agree.” 

“Only, you see, Mr. Coleton,” said Boxrider, smil¬ 
ing now, having in some sort found a policy—“you 
see I’ve not said anything of the kind. All I want 
is Miss Senior’s opinion on the way we have turned 
out her picture.” He kept turning an eye upon Les¬ 
ley —turning, you might say, a determined eye on 
Lesley— an eye which demanded her interest, which 
seemed even, obscurely, to threaten her if she did not 
concede her interest. 


268 


THE HOARDING 


Lesley flushed, glanced up once more and then half 
turned in his direction. 

“I—I have no fault to find with the reproduction.” 

“That is all I wanted to know,” said Boxrider 
now, suddenly and gravely. “Good evening, Miss 
Senior. Good evening, Mr. Coleton.” 

He turned and strode off, leaving both those others 
suffering a feeling of being involved in an anti¬ 
climax. Coleton, accustomed to phrase things in his 
mind, jibbed from phrasing what he felt, neverthe¬ 
less, had happened. The young man ought to have 
waited, left them to move off aloof and exalted above 
him and his vulgar commercial ploys. But it was 
he who had moved away. He had not been affected 
by the ironies thrown at him, and yet Coleton could 
not feel that his failure to be affected was due to his 
failure to understand. He had understood all right. 
In fact the young man had scored. 

Coleton, the familiar little pucker in his forehead, 
turned to the girl. 

“I can’t say that I’m much impressed by your 
friend.” 

“I don’t think I understand what you mean, 
Claude. My friend?” 

His face was quite dark though his lips still spoke 
gently. 

Inwardly he may be suspected to have suffered 
some of those pangs which come to a man who finds 
himself suddenly in contact with a force deeper than 
his own. He had no reason to suppose that the girl 
recognized any inferiority in his self-projection— 


THE HOARDING 


269 


the mere idea would have shocked him intolerably. 
If he did suffer by that conception of the young man 
it was as yet a mere haunting of the remoter cor¬ 
ridors of his mind. 

And all the time he was talking. They had moved 
off, each certainly aware of some failure in the 
quality of their movement, some essential loss of 
dignity. 

“. . . Anyhow you won’t be involved in any more 
of these unpleasant episodes. It would be intolerable 
if you were. But there will be no more yielding to 
the blandishments of—of persons of this kind. I 
know there are people who hold me old-fashioned 
because I oppose this blatant age. . . .” 

And so on with a kind of interminableness. 

She listened, as it seemed to her, in a dream. How 
oddly confused everything looked. And surely some¬ 
thing had been lost—had been carried away in the 
interval between their coming to that hoarding and 
their sorry leaving of it. (Yes, some active part of 
her intelligence got out that term ‘ 6 sorry”). 

The man was silent to moroseness. If he turned 
to her to speak there was discoverable in the w T ords 
a fretfulness. The word perhaps connotes a certain 
littleness of mental quality of which she was in no 
mood just now to suspect him. But for a detached 
observer that same word would seem appropriate 
enough. 

Certainly, though, the magic was out of the day. 


CHAPTER XVIII 


I 

Boxrider possessed what in brief moments of self¬ 
contemplation he liked to call a 4 ‘Business mind.” 
After the encounter with Lesley and Coleton he 
called upon that mind to operate. He gave it orders 
with a certain sting in the word of command. And 
the thing still lay inactive—deliberately, even, as he 
said presently, vindictively, inactive. He wished to 
provide for a situation in which he saw himself in 
danger of being involved—provided for it by giving 
him in the first place a correct perspective. This 
business intelligence of his should be telling him that 
the whole matter was unimportant, that if he al¬ 
lowed himself to be troubled by minor distractions, 
small rebuffs to his personal consequence, he would 
ultimately stultify himself. Perhaps the poor thing 
did try to tell him; and certainly he gave it an in¬ 
different attention. He wanted to let it direct his 
thinking as it had always done. Without being a 
psychologist he had some notions of mental proc¬ 
esses, and he knew something of his own. He had 
always approved them—or when, in some minor de¬ 
tail, he had disapproved, he had sought to correct 
what was wrong. He had taken a not too subtle 
pride in his intellectual efficiency. He did not, he 

270 


THE HOARDING 


271 


told himself, make mistakes; and he did not do so 
because he kept his mind sufficiently under control. 
But he was now involved in a difficulty which he was 
best able to express when he had first called his mind 
an engine. If his mind was an engine there was 
implied to work it an engineer. He had not before 
entirely realized the elementary fact that, when he 
talked about his own control of his mind, he had 
forgotten to explain to himself who “he” was. His 
mind was evidently not himself. So that there was 
that engineer to be identified. And given that the 
engineer did exist—did one not transfer the credit 
of having volition to him? An engine had no voli¬ 
tion—was merely something moved. The fact was 
that Boxrider was undergoing a process objectively 
familiar to all young men—the process of being in 
love. He was immensely perturbed—and immensely 
moved to happiness! He considered the influence of 
this overwhelming experience upon the success of 
his life, as he conceived success—yes, he had liberty 
enough, forced liberty enough to do that before it 
was too late; and if still immensely perturbed, yet 
still, too, he remained immensely moved to happi¬ 
ness. 

But he was disturbed by other thoughts—particu¬ 
larly by a reminder of that meeting with Lesley and 
Coleton. He made no mistake about the relationship 
in which that pair stood. They were lovers. There 
was something in that man’s attitude . . . and there 
;was no missing the character of the girl’s feeling. 

Reciprocity? He supposed so—she giving back 


272 


THE HOARDING 


to Coleton. For he had the eye to see Coleton had 
given. . . . And yet, as another man might have 
been, he was uneasy. For no reason that he could 
discover to be selfish, he was uneasy. What was it? 
Considering the matter detachedly, as he believed 
he was able to do, and trying to envisage a future 
for that girl—a future with happiness in it—he still 
was uneasy. 

Boxrider, w r hen his judgment was being brought 
to bear upon the relations between men and women, 
was not, perhaps, a man of the most acute percep¬ 
tions. And yet his mind was trained to read and 
adjust itself to character. His success rested upon 
that alertness of his to the play of minds about him, 
as the success of all men who achieve anything rests 
upon their mental perceptions, their sense of the 
minds about them. 

And now, considering Coleton with all possible 
bias in the man’s favour, he was still uneasy. ... A 
man that the world knew, yes; that men agreed to 
talk about, to admire. A man called by certain of 
his admirers “great’’ (wonderful word), and by 
many others “distinguished.” Distinguished writer, 
that was it. Let the word go then—a man who filled 
a place in the world; who (face the facts, the pos¬ 
sible facts, he admonished himself bravely), when he 
married, would give to his wife a name and a place 
and a consequence. A situation to desire for anyone 
in whom one’s interest was really aroused. 

And yet. ... 


THE HOARDING 


273 


There was something ... a softness, a certain 
femininity, or was it a suggestion of an experience 
engendered by contact with women? He could not 
yet satisfactorily characterize the thing. 

Boxrider’s active business mind—that cherished 
possession—had, oddly enough, much just now to 
exercise it. It was an adventurous mind—a mind 
which ran ahead and did so unfearfully. And just 
now it did not merely run ahead—it bounded for¬ 
ward; for dominating all his ideas was that new 
notion which had just come to him on the Embank¬ 
ment : the Courtenay picture. That, everywhere, on 
the walls! 

Oh, yes, he knew what some people would say! 
He did not need to try to guess. That man—Coleton 
—yes, he saw Coleton’s lips as he characterized the 
scheme. And others . . . Lesley. 

And yet he was of the kind that does not change 
its mind for man or woman—even for a particular 
woman. Conceivably, being human, he was not sorry 
that he had already begun to work out a plan which 
should raise Coleton’s opposition. Certainly, from 
Coleton, opposition was the only thing he could wel¬ 
come. 

But with regard to the girl his attitude was more 
obscure, perhaps more interesting. Influenced by 
Coleton she would certainly disapprove; and her dis¬ 
approval might be turned into a dislike which was 
not hot—and therefore tamable—dislike, but a cold, 
contemptuous and probably enduring distaste: a 


274 


THE HOARDING 


mere distaste which, acting upon her mind, made her 
at last find him merely an irrelevance. He was not 
prepared to endure that. And yet- 

He never for a moment hesitated in that intent of 
his. Rather, he took on a new energy of endeavour. 
If, before, he had played with the scheme, he now 
resolved to work upon it, to press it. He widened 
the gulf between herself and him? Yes. And yet 
he had that native determination of his own; and 
if we examine him we may come to a rather odd 
conclusion—the conclusion, namely, that he wel¬ 
comed every challenge, strengthened himself by each, 
as a strong man does with every struggle with each 
of the iron bars he rends to make his escape. And 
not only that he welcomed these challenges, but that, 
in some obscure part of his consciousness, there was 
already growing, not only the resolve that, out of 
them, victory should be won, but the notion that 
scarcely without them could victory be won. Con¬ 
ciliate her? No, he would defy her and her preju¬ 
dices ; let her lean to them . . . and win. 

Youth? Familiar phenomenon of prancing ego¬ 
tism, easy confidence, vast o’ertopping assurance? 
Here is merely youth boastful and absurd? Con¬ 
ceivably. Yet was not it ever thus when the heart 
of the young man was stout enough? And the heart 
of this young man had stood up against the world 
from the beginning. 

He was not going back; there was to be no with¬ 
drawal, no hesitation. And the better to show this 
to himself he (being now in the office) settled himself 



THE HOARDING 


275 


; 


at his desk and looked up at his partner. Beech 
must he told; he could not act without him. And 
Beech would make a fuss. He always did that. 

“I say, Beech,” he began briskly. (The best way 
to deal with Beech was to be brisk—to bounce him.) 
“I say, I’ve got a new scheme.’’ 

Beech groaned, looked up, antagonism visibly 
gathering in his eyes. 

“Weill” 

“Did you happen to read about that Courtenay 
picture on its way to America?” 

“No—yes—confound it, Boxrider, what do I know, 
or you know, for that matter, about pictures? But 
I did see some filthy paragraph. The kind you do 
see in our abominable modern Press. These swine 
laying their defiling hands on such art treasures as 
are left to us; oh, yes, I saw that.” 

“Well, I’ve been inquiring. It could be bought.” 

“Bought? Of course it could be bought,” cried 
Beech fretfully. He was being played upon by 
vague, irritating suspicions. 

“Yes, but I mean by anybody. By you—by 
me. . . .” . 

‘ i Could it ? And then we’d hang it up on that wall 
yonder, I suppose, just to satisfy the world of our 
financial as opposed to our intellectual solvency; or, 
I know”—his voice rising to that curious scream- 
pitch which characterized it when he was working up 
to one of those emotional crises—“I know, we’ll buy 
it and then use it to advertise Kingfords!” 

“Why not?” 


276 


THE HOARDING 


So softly had fallen the question in an atmosphere 
still vibrating with the shrillnesses of Beech’s attack 
that for a moment the senior partner scarcely real¬ 
ized what had happened. For “happened” suits the 
circumstances perhaps better than “what had been 
said.” 

“Why not?” By that had Boxrider declared him¬ 
self, delivered his plan, cast it into form, uttered 
it and made it current in the minds of men—that 
plan which had come to him as he had read a placard 
hanging behind a van on the Embankment. 

II 

Beech was on his feet, his eyes, as Boxrider had 
seen them before, dark with suddenly wrought pas¬ 
sion. 

“Why not! Why not? Did I hear you say why 
not? Because, Boxrider, if you did. . . . Besides” 
—he broke off with a sudden change, a characteristic 
habit, the habit of a mind naturally vehement but 
inconsequent. (Beech reminded his junior some¬ 
times of a terrier seeking his master and diverted 
by a second scent)—“besides, the thing’s prepos¬ 
terous. You were just talking about its price, and 
its price is prohibitive! A good thing too—since it 
saves me from wasting further breath on an utterly 
absurd and, I’m bound to say, Boxrider, rather dis¬ 
gusting scheme—I beg your pardon,” with charac¬ 
teristically uneasy irony, “I suppose I must use your 
lingo—proposition. ’ ’ 



THE HOARDING 


277 


“Disgusting!” repeated Boxrider coolly. “Whom 
does it disgust? It disgusts you. And you were 
bound to be disgusted in any case.” This quite smil¬ 
ingly. “You always are, you know! As to its ab¬ 
surdity, I dissent. The thing can be done. The price 
of the picture isn’t as prohibitive as all that. It’s 
not the ‘Blue Boy.’ I’ve made inquiries and it can 
be bought for ten thou.” 

Beech nodded quickly in excited satisfaction. 
“Exactly, and it might as well be ten million.” 

“Oh, no!” said Boxrider coolly. “Oh, no! In 
fact, I’ve found the buyer.” 

“You have! And who is the fool—or the vul¬ 
garian—I really,” throwing out his hands in mock 
despair, ‘ ‘ I really don’t know what to call him! ’ ’ 

“The fool—and vulgarian is the gentleman most 
interested, Beech. You, yourself, you will remember, 
suggested a few minutes ago that we might use the 
picture for Kingford, and—well—Kingford is the 
man who’s going to buy!” 

Beech darted across the room, turned and came 
back, his head held down, but in such a way that 
his line of vision was nevertheless directly over Box- 
rider’s head. 

“I suppose you’re speaking the truth—you’re not 
merely anticipating your persuasion of our—our 
client?” (It was odd how Beech found himself 
forced to be respectful in his references to the one 
valuable connexion which he had been able to main¬ 
tain from his father’s day.) 

“Certainly I am speaking the truth.” For the 


278 


THE HOARDING 


first time Boxrider spoke sharply. 4 4 Being a sen¬ 
sible being Kingford saw my point at once. That 
picture is an immortal thing. Very well. Put it on 
the wall and hand it down to posterity. You’re giv¬ 
ing the poor man at last a supremely great picture 
in a way that you can never give him a picture in 
the National Gallery. Poor men are busy men. 
They’ve no time to go to picture galleries—even free 
ones. And busy men don’t spend their Saturday 
afternoons coming into town to see pictures. But 
put pictures where they must see them every day 
and you’re bringing great art into their lives. You 
say that isn’t the motive. I say that it’s a very big 
part of the motive. I’m out to change the hoardings, 
and here’s our finest chance. Kingford sees it. 
Kingford can afford the picture and will be able, 
if he wants to, to put it on his own walls or do, what 
I’m urging him to do, present it to a public gallery, 
while every hoarding and-” 

44 And nothing will convince me!” burst in Beech. 
44 It’s a hideous thing—a scandal, I’m surprised at 
Kingford; no, I’m not, because he seems to let you 
influence him. You’ve driven him as you drove— 
that girl.” 

4 4 What?” 

But Beech, without further word, seizing his hat, 
had walked quickly from the room. 




CHAPTER XIX 


I 

A great battle was now joined. For that plan of 
Boxrider’s was carried through with an immense 
zest. The thing became known, and becoming known 
caused enormous and extraordinary reactions in 
many minds. Boxrider was fully resolved; and the 
whole of his power to advertise other people was 
now put unreservedly at his own service! If he could 
make the “propositions” of others known to a world 
which would willingly enough have directed its at¬ 
tention elsewhere, he was engaged now to provide 
his own “proposition” with “publicity.” He did 
not choose to disguise the scheme: he thrust it upon 
the notice of a shrinking world willing to be inter¬ 
ested but not sure that disapproval must not ul¬ 
timately be the proper gesture. And within the 
range of his policy he deliberately included this ag¬ 
gressive projection, upon the public imagination, of 
his scheme to bend even the genius of a Courtenay 
to the purpose of his mind. 

The thing was paragraphed on the very day that 
the picture was bought. “Famous Courtenay to 
stay,” ran a super-headline. “To Hang not on Walls 
of National Gallery but on the Hoardings.” There 
were other statements of the same fact. And the 


279 


280 


THE HOARDING 


information followed that Kingford had bought the 
picture and meant to present it to the nation—via 
the walls of London. 

Immediately there was much looking of the gift 
horse in the mouth. On the very day following the 
announcement of the sale, the chief protagonist of 
the 6 ‘Protest against Public Advertising” delivered 
his opinion in the columns of the world’s ‘ 4 classic” 
daily sheet. The paper found the matter of such 
general interest and the principle involved so in¬ 
triguing that it dealt with the letter in its leader 
columns. And the name of Claude Coleton was thrust 
upon the attention of a world sections of which had 
before remained ignorant of a character so honour¬ 
ably distinguished. The eye of Boxrider, as he 
opened the paper, leapt to that letter like hound to 
hare. There was something for him to do at once— 
reply. That man would see the reply, and if he saw 
it the girl, too, should be conscious of its vigorous 
gesture; for vigorous gesture it should have. It was 
bound to have that coming from such a mind occu¬ 
pied by such a purpose. And so there at his desk 
sat Boxrider writing. Presently, he reflected, he 
would go round and talk over the letter with King- 
ford: but first he would write the reply, and his 
hurrying hand moved over the sheet. There was 
some things to be said—things he wanted to say even 
if they were not strictly relevant to the present facts. 

He was sufficiently occupied to be scarcely aware 
when Beech came in and sat down opposite. An 
“Ah, Beech!” was about the only recognition Box- 


THE HOARDING 


281 


rider made of the entry. He wrote on, and writing 
he was ignorant of the surveillance of that man 
opposite. Beech had lifted a pen, but it lay now in a 
hand which rested idly on the desk; and he sat there 
watching, speculating, guessing—indeed assuring 
himself of a good deal. 

Boxrider knew nothing of all that. But he knew 
nothing of that quite other fact in a remarkable 
situation: that another hand had earlier in the day 
written a letter upon just that theme which occupied 
his hand now—a letter, too, directed just as this 
present letter would by and by be directed. 

In the meantime he envisaged himself at last, de¬ 
liberately, as the protagonist of a great and original 
movement which should give a new dignity to com¬ 
merce and a new purpose to art. Why not? The 
more he considered, the more confident did he be¬ 
come, and the more did his mind concentrate upon a 
purpose in relation to which originally he may con¬ 
ceivably have wanted conviction. The opportunity 
which Coleton now gave him was one that he wel¬ 
comed. He would publish not only an opinion but 
a proclamation: he would announce a new thing. 

“What,” he demanded, “makes men holding Mr. 
Coleton’s views raise these objections? They think 
they are defending great art from vandalism. But 
on what is their defence grounded? What is the 
principle? Is there, as a matter of fact, a principle 
at all? Is not what moves them really merely a prej¬ 
udice? Because a thing has never been done before, 
therefore, say these people, it is never to be done. I 


282 


THE HOARDING 


invite them to consider this syllogism—as I believe 
they like to call it. I defy them to point out a flaw 
in it. It is a good thing for a man to see great pic¬ 
tures. Advertising gives better opportunities for 
showing men great pictures than any other means. 
Therefore, great pictures ought to be used in adver¬ 
tising. There is plenty of bad advertising art. Say 
that, and I agree. But having attacked bad adver¬ 
tising art, why, when a man tries to provide good 
advertising art—why, I say, attack him? The real 
truth is that my critics cannot think with inde¬ 
pendence of judgment. They do not say this thing 
is bad on its merits—they say it is bad because it 
has never been done before. Once upon a time these 
same people, or their ancestors, were made ill at the 
mere thought of a woman earning her own living. 
They could not argue, and their real objection was 
to the fact that what was involved was a change. The 
same people objected to railways because, they said, 
men wanted to move too fast. Their real objection 
was to the fact that what was involved was a change. 

“I am wrong only if it is bad for a man to see 
beautiful pictures. I am not wrong because I want 
to do something which involves a change.” 

He signed his letter and added a postscript: 

“By the way, does Mr. Coleton object to his pub¬ 
lisher advertising his new book?” 

II 

That letter raised a noise louder than any which 


THE HOARDING 


283 


had been made before. The name of Boxrider began, 
indeed, to be a sign for Vandal. You could get a 
laugh at any pseudo-art club if you brought in his 
name. “Walking along the Embankment, ladies and 
gentlemen, I was suddenly requested by an electric¬ 
ally lighted communication from the Surrey side of 
the river to try a cup before bedtime. I dare say 
that there are some of you who are so old-fashioned 
as to wish to be spared these illuminated and, shall 
I call them, illuminating reminders—some of you 
who are not Boxriders-” 

There would be a laugh then. 'And the “lighter 
vein” providers in the newspapers found their 
chance also. With a little ingenuity or industry, or 
both, they could extract some kind of a pun from the 
mere name. And there were other courses to which 
resort could be had: other tit-bits of opportunity; 
the professional humourist does not abandon the 
bone till all the meat is off it. 

The total result was that a young man who had set 
out to advertise others was getting the advertise¬ 
ment of his life. 

He fully realized it, and he did not complain. It 
was good for Beech & Boxrider, and certainly from 
the point of view of business it was good. The bold¬ 
ness of this young man, his certainty, his resolute¬ 
ness, attracted to him what he called, and liked to 
call, the big men—the people with the commodities 
which were of the “household word” order—“Peppo 
Mustard,” “Leafman’s Tea,” “Anti-Smut Soap.” 

One partner rejoiced. The other? It seemed to 



284 


THE HOARDING 


Boxrider that Beech was more and more given to 
those shrill passionate complaints of his. There had 
been one curious incident, for instance, on the morn¬ 
ing when Boxrider’s reply to Coleton had appeared. 
The junior partner had turned down the page and 
flung it across to Beech. 

“That’s my answer to Coleton—and, if you don’t 
mind my saying it—to you.” 

Beech had looked up quickly, brought an eye upon 
the paper for a moment, and then, with a finger on 
another letter in smaller type published wuth others 
in furtherance of the discussion on the propriety 
of using great Art for Advertising, he pushed the 
sheet back. 

“That’s my answer. I mean,” he corrected 
quickly, “that embodies what would be my answer 
if I had to reply—to you! ’ ’ 

Boxrider glanced at the letter. It was, he saw, 
signed “Disgusted.” Then he looked across with 
a smile. 

“You’d seen the paper already this morning?” 

“I?” cried Beech. 

“Well, you know you hadn’t time to read 4 Dis¬ 
gusted ’s’ letter. And yet you say it embodies your 
views. I suppose the mere word Disgust-” 

“Yes,” Beech acknowledged with a strange eager¬ 
ness to fit a cap. “Yes, that was it. The word did 
express my feelings so perfectly that I assumed the 
letter embodied my opinions.” 

The matter had dropped, Boxrider remembered. 
But later in the day he was curious to observe Beech 



THE HOARDING 


285 


cutting something out of a copy of the great daily 
in which a nation’s anxieties are always so liberally 
dealt with. 

So far that was only an incident. There was no 
doubt that Beech was profoundly stirred; he con¬ 
trived continual protests, offered threats, and only 
stopped his bitter plaints when, the climax of his 
aroused passion being reached, he ran furious from 
the room. 

These scenes were now of daily occurrence, and 
their character may have seemed, to a casual eye, to 
have had very little variety. To Boxrider they ap¬ 
peared to have some developing quality; he could 
not properly describe it but it was there; it was as 
if the mind of Beech passed from one minor explo¬ 
sion to the next along a powder trail which must at 
last reach the magazine itself. 

With one curious mood which he had noticed in 
Beech—a mood which had had the effect of giving 
him an obscure sense of disturbance and that was 
characterized by a curious coldness and determina¬ 
tion in contrast to the more usual excitements— 
Boxrider continued at intervals to find himself in 
contact. In such moments he was again impressed 
by some persistent intent in his partner, “For all 
the world,” as he had said to himself once, “as if 
Beech were working a side line on the Q. T.” But 
at last he began definitely to believe that this mood 
was obscurely related to those other very different 
manifestations—those quick furies. . . . He still 
did not know how to put it. But it seemed to him 


286 


THE HOARDING 


\ 

that in Beech there was something—malignant. 
Whether he held himself or flung away restraints— 
always that malignancy. Something abnormal that 
pointed—yes, definitely—to a final mental catastro¬ 
phe. And in the meantime these scenes . . . absurd 
scenes. . . . 

An occasion which Boxrider remembers was once 
when, looking across at Beech and pushing back his 
chair as if to give emphasis to a special occasion he 
had begun, 1 ‘ Silk & Rafena are giving up the big 
ground floor office in A.” 

“Well?” said Beech sharply. 

“Well, I’ve been thinking we could move there.” 

“What on earth for?” cried Beech, his whole 
attitude immediately inimical, as always, to any 
scheme of his partner. 

“Because it’s business. We’re growing—you 
may not realize it, but we’re growing.” 

“Realize it? Growing? Yes. I do realize we’re 
growing, Boxrider; but growing at what an expense? 
—at the expense of any rag of reputation for decent 
feeling we may ever have had, at the expense of 
any-” 

“Oh, that weary stuff, Beech! Must it always 
go on?” 

“Yes.” Beech’s face twitched; his eyes were 
shining, too, with an odd brightness which Boxrider 
had noticed there sometimes of late. “Yes, it must 
go on as long as I have enough spirit to protest. I 
mayn’t have it always. I—I—think sometimes I’ll 
come to the end of something some day. But I will— 



THE HOARDING 


287 


I will protest as long as I can. Onr name is a by¬ 
word wherever decent people are, and if I had any 
influence with Kingford—if you hadn’t filched the 
influence I once had—I’d ” 

“ Steady, my friend. Your influence—be fair— 
wasn’t much—ever.” He spoke quietly, with a cer¬ 
tain tolerance, even a kindness. “Kingford was on 
the point of leaving us. Well, I’ve kept Kingford. 
I’ve trebled our profits from that source alone. I 
don’t know that I haven’t multiplied them five times 
—and I’ve brought you a lot more from other 
sources. In a year or two, if you choose, you can 
retire—I’ll buy you out. You’ll be free to live the 
kind of life you like. But we want bigger offices 
and we’ve now the chance of getting them without 
leaving the building.” 

“I suppose you’ve engaged them?” 

“Not without consulting you. I’ve been over 
them—yes. I’ve arranged what the landlord is to 
do for us in the way of decoration and when we are 
to get possession, but I didn’t sign the lease till I’d 
seen you.” 

“Then I’m against. Yes, I hate the whole thing. 
I-” 

“You realize, do you—that we shall be turning 
back business, and that if we turn back business 
your escape is going to be delayed?” 

Beech sprang up, the familiar sign. 

“Have your own way then; have your own way! 
You always do in any case. Your offer to consult 
me is merely a profession. It never was anything 






288 


THE HOARDING 


else.” He walked to the door hurriedly; then, with 
a trembling hand, grasped the latch and went out, 
pulling the door behind him noisily. 

Boxrider sighed, took up the lease, spread it out, 
rang a bell, and when the clerk appeared, 4 ‘I’m go¬ 
ing to sign a document,” he said. “I want you to 
witness the signature.” 

And that is how, incidentally, Higgs, the liftman, 
was able to announce that 4 4 ’E’s comin , back to me 
’ere. Never saw no good in D. And Vs comin , in 
on the ground floor this time. Beech? Oh yes. 
Beech ’as got to come in with ’im. They all ’es to 
do that if ’e sez so.” 


IH 

As for Lesley she early heard echoes of the battle. 

44 That fellow you sold your picture to . . . that 
was bad enough of course.” She had got to expect 
the note of reproof, whenever Coleton had occasion 
to refer to her work. She even suspected him of 
contriving that reproof. “But if it was bad, what 
he now proposes is infinitely worse. It really passes 
my comprehension, Lesley, how you ever suffered 
to approach you a—a person capable of artistic out¬ 
rages of that sort.” 

It seemed to her of late, indeed, that Coleton had 
begun to adopt an attitude which seemed not merely 
to involve reproof but something definitely reforma¬ 
tory. It was a skilfully enough disguised intent, 
but there certainly began to seem to her to be a pur- 


THE HOARDING 


289 


pose at the back of much of his lightly spun talk. 
She even felt herself, on occasion, made the protago¬ 
nist of the whole philosophy and practice of this 
fearful thing called “Publicity.” And at first she 
was not prepared to protest. She whispered peccavi, 
she bowed her head. Remember this girl was in 
love—or thought she was in love. She was lifted up. 
The man had exalted her. She was humble when 
she thought of what he had done. Not merely did 
she discover in him the attributes presumably dis¬ 
tinguishable in one who helped to direct the thought 
of his time, whose influence went to protect the idea 
of art and beauty, who was acknowledged a de¬ 
fender of fine traditions; but also she found that he 
must possess some special right to shape her mind, 
direct her thoughts. 

A mood? Possibly. And not a mood without 
parallel in the minds of other young women situated 
as she was! 

The effect of this manner and attitude of his was 
calculated to preserve the continuance of the mood. 
He had asked for her; but having asked her, he 
asked no more. If he gave—and he certainly may 
be held to have given—he made no show of giving 
now. He merely accepted. If this was a policy it 
was certainly a policy calculated to keep the lady 
offering all the time; it almost made her the suitor. 
It kept her sensibility active and trembling; it main¬ 
tained the flow of current through the channels of 
her being. She now had never the leisure necessary 
to detach herself and look about her. She was like 



290 


THE HOARDING 


a woman earning a wretched living by working long 
hours, who has not time to go in quest of a stand¬ 
point and a philosophy. 

Of one thing she was very sure: she hated the 
mention on Claude’s lips, not only of the picture 
but of the man who had made her sell it. In Cole- 
ton’s company, indeed, Boxrider had come to seem 
to her of the type normally characterized by herself 
and Netta as “a creature.” They called men crea¬ 
tures whom they agreed were for some reason or 
other excluded from their own social comity. And 
she made no attempt to defend Boxrider. 

“I see he’s been in ‘The Times/ ” murmured 
Claude, lingering over tea opposite Netta and with 
Lesley at his side. “He has been trying to defend 
himself. And of course,” with an odd, rather unc¬ 
tuous, profession of mildness, “I dare say the objec¬ 
tions which I and others have raised are imper¬ 
ceptible to him—necessarily so.” 

‘ ‘ Poor blind Mr. Boxrider, ’ ’ said Netta. * ‘ Couldn’t 
you get up a class for the education of him and his 
kind?” 

Coleton flushed slightly. He glared, while his 
nose twitched in a way it had when he was piqued. 
He did not like to be chaffed, and Netta’s little ma¬ 
licious ironies were always out of place; he wished 
she could see it. A glance at Lesley, however, as¬ 
sured him that she was not in sympathy. So with 
a wave of the hand he made to dismiss the lightly 
offered words. (After all, poor Netta! Perhaps he 
had not treated Netta too well. He ought to have 


THE HOARDING 


291 


shown her earlier how groundless were any hopes 
she had.) 

“I am really rather sorry for some of these peo¬ 
ple/ ’ he declared. “ There they go right through 
life defying every canon of Art or right feeling. 
And when they reach middle age and have made 
what, I believe, they call their ‘pile/ they look about 
them with ingenuous smiles and expect people of 
taste to form friendships with them.” 

“Then when Mr. Boxrider has made his pile,” 
said Netta, “he will merely be wasting good paper 
by writing to Mr. Claude Coleton and asking him 
to luncheon.” 

“I’m sure,” put in Lesley, who felt that the at¬ 
mosphere was growing uneasy, “that Mr. Boxrider 
will have enough friends of his own without 
troubling us.” 

This “us” was a reminder to Netta. After all, 
he is going to marry me. I’m perfectly aware that 
you think he ought to be going to marry you. “Us” 
—to remind her friend that it was she, Lesley, 
whose fate was involved with Claude’s. Look for¬ 
ward—see us together. It may hurt, but you have 
asked for the pain, have you not? See us in a close 
spiritual conjunction from which you must neces¬ 
sarily be excluded. Only brief is your authority to 
pour out tea for him! 

Netta smiled—smiled easily. But Netta perfectly 
understood. And Lesley’s manoeuvre had been en¬ 
tirely successful, for the elder woman had no more 
“chaff” for Claude. 


292 


THE HOARDING 


As for Claude, he may be supposed to have under¬ 
stood every detail of that minor duel. Women’s 
minds—was not it his business to read them? 

He was grateful enough to Lesley to withhold 
the note of criticism from his voice; he approved 
her turning of Netta’s attack—approved not only 
the fact of it, but the mere manner of it. (It was 
well for Netta Graeme to remember that she was not 
the selected woman.) And, he so approving, his 
voice grew quick and tender, he bent over her whis¬ 
pering, he became so definitely the lover that Netta 
presently found excuse to slip away. Alone, in the 
hall, her face grew pale, her lip trembled, and she 
passed to her room as if in haste to hide herself. 
. . . Claude drew close to Lesley. 

4 ‘Poor Netta. . . . Women of her kind are 

so-” He paused, smiling. The girl looked up, 

made curious. 

“I suppose, Claude . . . you’ve known-” 

“I’ve known one or two. . . . We have had talks. 
It is possible to guess.’’ He shrugged a shoulder. 
“But it is of this little woman that I’m think¬ 
ing. ...” 

Lesley sat up suddenly. “Of me? Well, let us 
be very prosaic. I’m going to arrange my pro¬ 
gramme for next year.” 

The little pucker reappeared in Claude’s forehead. 

“Programme? What can you be thinking of to 
talk of a programme? You don’t want a pro¬ 
gramme. 1 am your programme.” 

“No, Claude. I’m a wage-earner. I’ve got to 




THE HOARDING 


293 


live. And I’ve got to live on what I earn till— 
till-” 

4 4 Till all responsibilities pass - into my happy 
hands,” he put in rather awkwardly. That was 
what she had meant certainly, though she could not 
say, “Well, yes.” 

He waved his hands. “Then I suppose I’ve no 
right to interfere—yet.” (A change of note: and 
yet a change to be anticipated—feared. . . . There 
was that thing she had heard . . . that word . . . 
Philanderer. One who played, who asked for no 
responsibilities, who liked to fondle and to pass on.) 
She did not know; she—wished she did. She had 
dreaded his forbiddings. She thought she wanted 
them now. They ought to have been heard now. 
What had he to wait for! He was a well-to-do man. 
. . . He wanted to be “her programme.” But what 
else? . . . Was it possible that Netta could be— 
right ? 

It was that which wounded most deeply—to think 
that her moment of triumph over Netta was illusory! 
Netta might already have read the situation and be 
secretly smiling. Lesley flushed up suddenly with 
shame and anger. 

Later it was to be her remembrance of her emo¬ 
tions at this time, and particularly her recollection 
that she had been chiefly disturbed by the thought of 
Netta’s triumph, which produced in her mind many 
remarkable revaluations. 

At the moment she was occupied by the fact of 
his submission—of his sudden submission. And 





294 


THE HOARDING 


certainly her primary emotion was chagrin. He had 
not struggled against her, not even pleaded. She 
had her living to earn. Very well, said he in effect, 
earn it —not “let me earn it for you.” 

They made tepid speeches now; both seemed as 
if they tried to survive an anticlimax. His talk be¬ 
came as flat as it could become; hers grew astonish¬ 
ingly—what could be called—business-like. 

“I shall have two pictures for the R. A.,” she said, 
“and Johnson—my pet dealer, you know—has com¬ 
missioned me to do him three. And a man I know 
has given me some magazine covers to do, and then ’’ 
—with a quickness and a smile that he could not 
quite comprehend—“and then if I get very hard 
up, there are always these advertising people.’’ 

“No,” he broke in, “no. I will not have that!” 
He had refused to take it lightly—to respond to her 
smile. “I can’t permit-” 

“Permit?” she put in, arching an eyebrow. 

He responded confusedly: “Yes—permit.” But 
his authority was unsteady again at once. This girl 
fell behind other women, he found, in this, that she 
sought to impose conditions. He liked them to give 
all—unconditionally; and they did generally, bless 
them! She, on the other hand, could only think in 
terms of “If you want to control my life you must 
give me—a home. Until then I preserve my inde¬ 
pendence.” 

So that once again the talk fell to commonplace 
levels; and neither was sorry when presently, her 



THE HOARDING 


295 


eyes lighted by a happy smile, Netta Graeme came 
back into the room. 

Coleton coming back a day or two later came with 
a new policy. The fact is he had tried, poor man, 
to do without and found that he could not do with¬ 
out. This woman, even if—perhaps because—she 
did not conform to what he considered to be the 
order for women, was destructive of content. He 
had to come back. He was—he announced to him¬ 
self with an odd egotistic excitement—really in love. 

To one of his temperament the experience was 
full of amazement, thrills. To have written him¬ 
self oft, deliberately, as incapable of that emotion, 
and to discover it a motive in his being, astonished 
and almost delighted him, if it made him a little 
fearful. He must see this witch again—have access 
to her, talk to her. Even, if it must be, bend himself 
to her. . . . Only, as to that, he would consider still 
a little further. 

But in the meantime the pair were lovers again. 

There were more excursions—many letters when, 
as happened presently, he ran off for a country- 
house visit. Netta used to see the coming of these 
letters. The writing was not unfamiliar. She could 
match it from letters in her own possession. . . . 
Perhaps she suspected that she could match the sen¬ 
timents expressed within. 

For her the days were now a dull, aching monot¬ 
ony, varied only by some little barb of quick pain as 


296 


THE HOARDING 


she saw the letters arrive; or, when Claude being 
back again, she watched from behind curtains the 
pair setting off down the street. She had made no 
mistake; there was something in Claude’s eyes that 
had never been there when she had known him. She 
perfectly understood what he would try to do now— 
how he would make determined efforts to control 
himself. But there would be that element of deter¬ 
mination there, and the very fact that it was there 
and that it was necessary, only went to prove that 
there was something which did not easily yield. 
Claude was getting out of self-control. And she 
knew him well enough to know that, in such a crisis, 
he would not show persistence. He did not want the 
domesticities. But he would take them now—would 
yield. 

That girl had got him; and with that conviction 
now firmly established, and with earlier hopes of 
her own survival dead, Netta found herself encased 
in darkness. She could see no glimmer, no hope, no 
rest. 

Some trite philosopher of the people has given 
the consolation that following a darkest hour comes 
the dawn. She wondered whether she had reached 
an ultimate on that occasion when she had set forth 
with Lesley on a certain shopping toil. 

“Shopping’’ it was called; actually, there had 
come a letter from Scotland in that well-known hand 
bidding Lesley see an occasional table for sale at a 
Strand dealer’s. “If you like it as much as I do 
ask the man to put it aside for me.” 


THE HOARDING 


297 


Crumbling. That was how Netta read the facts. 
The man, yes, was crumbling. Here was sign of it. 
He did not talk of marriage yet, but he talked of 
tables. He made his absence the excuse to send 
Lesley to look at a table which he could have ordered 
by post if he had wanted it. In any case, he could 
have had the business of it held over till his return. 
The suggestion offered to Lesley was, of course, that 
he—prepared. 

They loitered, shopping, and then had themselves 
conveyed by bus Strandwards. Netta used to won¬ 
der afterwards how their feet were directed to the 
bus roof. She was not aware of any particular im¬ 
pulse thither—they generally travelled inside. Sup¬ 
pose, though, they had not made that ascent? Her 
philosophy of life seemed again to be challenged. 

The dealer’s shop was near to the City boundary, 
so that they were approaching Clements Danes 
when they stood up to leave the bus. And it was 
now that there occurred that profoundly important 
moment which was mysteriously to govern so much 
that was to come after. The pair had looked down. 
Upon what? Upon what but that great hoarding 
standing up there veiling the slow uprising of the 
office of the Australian Commonwealth? And hang¬ 
ing upon that hoarding, in that great phantasmago¬ 
ria of colour, were many pictures, many legends, 
many appeals. Yet from these pictures one drew 
itself out with the dignity and splendour of royalty 
among commoners. From the midst of that massed 
talent the one thing of genius shone like the sun 


298 


THE HOARDING 


among the stars. It was Netta who spoke, rather 
casually, “ ‘The Woman in the Red Gown!’ Cour¬ 
tenay’s picture! To see it there! But—that will be 
the work of that dreadful young man-” 

“Dreadful?” The word—the question as it had 
seemed—had come from the lips of Lesley. 

Netta looked at her with sudden curiosity. The 
girl was pale and plainly excited by some sudden 
emotion. But of course . . . she must dislike this 
man; had not he embarrassed her, led her into an 
action which had created difficulties for her with her 
lover ? 

And yet . . . was there not something about her 
repetition of the word dreadful? . . . What was it? 
Was it merely a question? Netta found that inquiry 
occupying her mind to the exclusion of everything, 
though she went on speaking as they descended the 
bus and walked with eyes turning hoardingwards 
towards the curio dealer’s. “They said he would 
do it. I mean he said he would. And now he has 
done it! Poor Claude, how distressed he will be in 
all his beautiful feelings, won’t he?” 

“Please leave Claude alone,” said Lesley sud¬ 
denly, and, as it seemed to her hearer, a little 
stridently. 

“I’m sorry, dear. I will leave him alone. But 
really you know if I hadn’t heard Claude say what 
an extremely wicked outrage it was on the decencies 
of art—high art—I’d be inclined to think that Mr. 
Boxrider had almost justified himself. I—even I— 
can almost feel that there is beauty in these streets 



THE HOARDING 


299 


when I look at that wall. And we needn’t look at 
the name Kingfords if we don’t wish to.” 

The inquisitive Netta, talking all the time, was 
watching shrewdly; and immediately now she had 
something to add to her data—if that was to he the 
word: something valuable ... an extraordinary 
thing . . . gratitude. She was sure of it. Grati¬ 
tude. Then to go back, as she found herself going 
back to that moment on the bus-top, when Lesley 
had repeated that word—that word of Netta’s 
“dreadful.” How to characterize the repetition? 
But she knew how she was inclined to characterize 
it ... a challenge. ... Yes, Lesley had challenged 
the word . . . in a sense protested against it. 

And it was now that that extraordinary idea took 
possession of Netta. It took such possession that it 
did not loose its hold even while Lesley inspected 
the table, discussed Claude’s attitude towards it. 

On the way home, and later when they sat over 
their tea, the idea still filled the mind of the elder 
woman; and Lesley discovered in her friend a light¬ 
ness and brightness which seemed to be curious and 
certainly spontaneous. And, after all, if you have in 
you a reborn spirit of adventure, a sudden reblos¬ 
soming, you will conceivably be discovered with 
bright eyes and a glow in action. 


CHAPTER XX 


I 

That idea of Netta’s grew the more she consid¬ 
ered it. Perhaps it was governed by her will to 
believe. Certainly at last it filled her horizons, 
charging them with light and hope. For if that was 
possible, if that detachment of the girl conld be 
accomplished, who knew? Claude was in love; and 
a man in love is not susceptible to influences, how¬ 
ever inimical to his hopes. That could be true of 
many men. But she thought she knew Claude; cer¬ 
tainly she sought to assure herself that she knew 
him. Claude fed on adoration: was it not possible 
that he drew sustenance for any adoration he be¬ 
stowed from the adoration he received? Certainly 
the case of most women in relation to him was par¬ 
alleled by that of the girls who took out soldiers 
and paid expenses. They got back no more than 
they put out. If only she could be certain that that 
was true of Lesley in relation to Claude! Well, she 
would compel her own certainty. 

When she considered the other side of the case she 
felt, all the same, on surer ground. She was almost 
sure . . . and yet there were moments when she was 
not sure at all. 


300 


THE HOARDING 


301 


II 

There were conversations to remember; this, for 
instance: They had been opening their papers at 
breakfast time and in Netta's “Daily Picture'’ had 
been something that made her exclaim. 

“Lesley Senior," she read out, mock-sententious. 

Lesley looked up, catching the accent appropriate 
to quotation. 

“What do you mean?" 

“Merely that I see your name." 

“What have I been doing now?" 

“Oh, only this!" She tossed across the sheet in 
which Lesley's Kingfords picture appeared. 

“Oh, that!” with a grimace. “You needn't have 
reminded me of—of-" 

“Of that dreadful incident—that more dreadful 
young man." 

“Exactly," said the girl calmly. “You know how 
I feel." 

“I can only guess, my dear," said Netta mysteri¬ 
ously. 

Lesley turned her questioning eye upon her friend. 

“I wonder what you mean by that?" she said. 

“Very much what I say," answered Netta. “I'm 
sure that I think this man, this Mr. Boxrider, is 
impossible, as the rest of us do. And of course with 
Claude so often to suggest contrasts you must nat¬ 
urally feel the more strongly—always, of course, as¬ 
suming that the vision which Claude supplies hasn't 



302 


THE HOARDING 


driven out all others—so that Man, for you, is now 
comprehended in the one word Claude. But-” 

“Don’t be too absurd, Netta! A mild ridiculous¬ 
ness I can take from you, but there are really 
limits-” 

i1 Are there? But don’t interrupt, dear. I was 
going to say that even if Claude, like a great sun, 
has made all other men pale, ineffectual planets—and 
I’m sure that is the case—I’m quite sorry for poor 
Mr. Boxrider.” 

* ‘Sorry?” startled out of herself. “Why on earth 
should you be sorry?” 

“Because, my child—but evidently it is the privi¬ 
lege of youth and beauty to gather riches without 
knowing it, to find pockets full without a notion of 
the filling. Seemingly you don’t know— really don’t 
know. ’ ’ 

i ‘ Know ? ’ ’ 

“Why that the poor absurd creature is really 
quite affected by you.” 

“How absurd you are—rather offensively so now, 
if you don’t mind my saying so.” 

“I don’t mind in the least. I was merely stating 
what was evident to the senses of anyone. But I 
dare say you’d rather not hear.” 

‘ ‘ Certainly I would rather not hear. . . . Though 
I don’t understand what you mean. . . . Evident to 
the senses.” 

“Why,” cried Netta, refraining from comment on 
the contradiction in the terms of Lesley’s reply 
(that curiosity was inconsistent with a following re- 




THE HOARDING 


S03 


fusal to hear)—“why, it was perfectly evident. The 
creature came here-” 

“Is it necessary to call a man a creature simply 
because we agree to—to—not to approve of him?” 

“By no means. Indeed, I should wonder if 
anything is really necessary. Well, then, the man. 
He came here ostensibly about a picture.” 

“ Actually, surely, about a picture.” 

“I stick to my word. Ostensibly. And quite 
plainly—it was plain to me—it wasn’t the picture 
but the artist that interested him.” 

“How ridiculous you are!” cried Lesley, rising 
from the table. She spoke calmly. There was no^ 
added colour in her cheeks; and to the extent of the 
absence of something expected, Netta Graeme was 
disappointed. 

As for Lesley, that young woman was certainly 
undergoing immense emotional reactions. Claude. 
Yes, she had held to the image of Claude and dis¬ 
covered in it what, precisely? 

And now she racked her mind to find some early 
whisper, some foreshadowing. Had she felt that 
thing and promptly suppressed it? By what was 
she now haunted? 

There were dates to which she looked not less than 
Netta looked. Netta’s date was hers. But there 
was another certainty. If we but knew what we do 
when we disturb an image of ourselves! 




CHAPTER XXI 


I 

A figure beginning at last to take its place in these 
adventures of certain souls is that of Beech. Always 
now he was conscious of disturbances; he found that 
minor things—the slamming of a door, the whistling 
of those clerks outside—which had always troubled 
him, had now power to carry him off into conditions 
of mind when, as he supposed, he could not be nor¬ 
mal. Sooner or later, as he told himself, a crash 
would come. He would examine himself in the glass 
at home in the morning with an eager half-frightened 
curiosity, looking for 4 ‘signs .’ 9 

He thought he knew what to look for, believed that 
he understood the significance of the unsteady 
muscle, the new leanness about the temples, the 
startled eye. People talked about nervous break¬ 
down. It would not, when it came, be merely a break¬ 
down. 

Looking for causes (not that he needed to look— 
they were set out obviously before him, as he told 
himself), his mind came back always to Boxrider. 
Every misery in his life had sprung from Boxrider. 
It was Boxrider who had contrived those contemp¬ 
tuous challenges to his opinions; those outrages upon 
his own conceptions of decency in art, in manners, 

804 


THE HOARDING 


305 


and in life itself; those subtle, personal humiliations 
which had made mere existence almost an agony. 
The clerks, taught to create a contrast between their 
attitude towards one master and the other; the con¬ 
temptuous challenge to his feelings declared by the 
whole policy of the firm of which he had the mis¬ 
fortune to be a member—thoughts of these afflicted 
him until he wondered with a kind of detached 
curiosity for how much longer he could endure. In 
moments of extreme mental tension that kind of de¬ 
tachment is not uncommon. The poor victim watches 
the coming of final misfortune as the wretch at the 
stake notes, with a kind of naked curiosity, the ap¬ 
proach of the first tongue of flame which shall de¬ 
stroy him. 

But Beech, inaccurate student of his own psy¬ 
chology, knew this, that Boxrider’s offence was not 
his use of the clerks for his partner’s humiliation 
(in some very obscure part of his being Beech knew 
that that charge could not be maintained, though he 
refused to admit as much). Nor was it the policy 
which had found its climax in the use of the Courte¬ 
nay picture. The real offence was bound up with 
something else. He knew very well with what; he 
had merely to catch mental visions of the face of 
that girl. . . . 

Yes, at the last he had hated Boxrider because 
Boxrider had seemed to exercise an influence (he 
could not call it more; he was thankful that, strain 
as he could, he could not call it more). But he had 
been hideously aware of his partner as one who was 


306 


THE HOARDING 


everything that commanded success. And he had 
had a strange, deep fear that here in this matter of 
Lesley Senior, as in other matters, Boxrider must 
inevitably succeed. Then he had heard of the ap¬ 
pearance of Claude Coleton, and if Boxrider’s calm 
exterior confessed nothing, Beech yet had a subtle 
satisfaction in guessing his partner’s feelings. 

Nevertheless, his mind continued to be haunted. 
Boxrider, he told himself, was so certain in his aim, 
and Boxrider had unquestionably intended . . . and 
yet. . . . He was back with an idea which had occu¬ 
pied him before. Did it matter? What was it he 
wanted himself? He who had been starved of 
women and all that women could mean, who had now 
looked upon a woman whose merest movement had 
the significance of the eternal to him—where was he 
now? He wanted her, his heart cried for her, he was 
sick with hungering for the touch of that hand of 
hers . . . and yet? How often he halted, hesitated, 
preparing himself to answer that challenge hovering 
near. This girl for himself! ,Yes, but if not for 
himself then for none. Again a pause in his thinking, 
and then, finally, the admission—that other before 
Boxrider, that other before Boxrider. 

He could not further characterize his impulses. 
. . . They said—the people who talked at large— 
that love went with hate. Hate—hate suggested pure 
melodrama. Was he becoming melodramatic? 

He began to be afraid again. All his ideas went 
in cycles; and here he was involved once more in the 
cycle of fear—fear of the tremendous accuracy of 


THE HOARDING 


307 


Boxrider’s aim. Why need he be uneasy? There 
was going to be—a marriage. . . . He let the thought 
come . . . “Mrs. Coleton.” Well, he had never had 
a hope y and “Mrs. Coleton” might do as well as 
anything else. He had informed himself that he did 
not know much about Coleton apart from. . . . 

But now he felt he knew something. He grew 
uneasy with a new uneasiness, and stood ruminative 
for several minutes before he started off to walk 
again. 

And it was now that there came to him a new and 
sufficiently astonishing impulse—the impulse of a 
man who had ceased to be normal. 

It was now that Beech, breaking into the street, 
set out on that remarkable impulse for Chelsea. He 
would see her again. He wanted to tell himself that 
he had seen her before she married and went out of 
reach. But what he confessed at last was that he 
wanted to see she was still safe—from Boxrider. 
And if to anyone familiar with the actual circum¬ 
stances of recent events in Lesley’s circle, this idea 
—this fear—of Beech’s must seem unintelligible, 
that is no reason for failure to envisage the mind 
of this man. 

And so we find him on the way to the flat. 

II 

He stood looking at Netta—looking, as she said 
afterwards, “wildly, and yet stupidly, as if he could 
not quite think how he came to be there”—as if he 


308 


THE HOARDING 


had come to the door expecting only one face to meet 
him and was now reacting to a shock. 

All the same Netta was calm. 

“ Won’t yon come in,” she said sweetly, “Mr. Box- 
rider ? ’’ 

“No!” he protested with swift, shrill emphasis. 
“Beech, Beech, that’s my name.” 

4 ‘ Oh, yes, Mr. Beech! I mnst, ’ ’ with a little gentle 
malice, “have been thinking of the firm. Yon are 
Mr. Boxrider’s partner.” 

“Yes, yes, worse- Yes. I’m his partner. I 

called—in fact-” 

“Bnt do come in.” She had been finding life 
rather flat. Lesley was ont with Claude—another 
table, or was it a chair? This funny wild animal 
promised a little relief. Of course he wanted Lesley 
—they all seemed to do. She smiled at that thought 
without any tenderness. But she did not say that 
Miss Senior was out. She wanted amusement, and 
this man seemed to offer promise of it. She had 
seen Beech before and had guessed something. Yes, 
certainly he might be amusing. Moreover, there was 
that new idea of hers regarding Lesley. This Beech 
might be made to contribute something to the devel¬ 
opment of that idea. 

And so she led him in and brought him to the room 
where before he had spoken to the girl. Netta noted 
with sudden satisfaction Lesley’s photograph on the 
table opposite the chair in which she had planted 
Beech. His start and eager craning forward were 
both satisfying to her hungry malice. 




THE HOARDING 


309 


“I'm very sorry Miss Senior is out. I suppose 
you came to commission another picture.** 

6 6 Picture! Commission a picture! Most certainly 
I did not come to commission a picture. I assure 
you, Mrs. Graeme, I hate the whole thing.** 

(“I really thought the creature’s eyes would roll 
right out of his head in his funny excitement. He 
kept trying to stand up and then decided to stick to 
his seat. And his fingers were opening and closing 
and he was breathing hard and in a way that quite 
frightened me.**) 

She was watching him carefully, smilingly. 

“I wonder why you came then,** very gently. 

“I came—I came to—to call. I understood that 
she—that Miss Senior would shortly be removing 
herself from the need to sell her art to—to our sort.** 
This with a self-immolating contempt. “And I 
thought I*d like to tell her that I personally disclaim 
any responsibility for what, I*m sure, was a wretched 
humiliation for her—especially as our house hap¬ 
pens to be responsible for the latest outrageous- 

I mean the scheme which is being discussed—and 
disapproved of just now.** 

“I see.** Netta was moving very slowly. “Yes, 
I suppose she will be removing herself as you put it; 

and yet-** boldness was coming now and she 

looked up—“and yet I sometimes wonder-** 

“Wonder? What do you wonder?** 

“I sometimes wonder whether she wouldn’t like 
to go on painting pictures for—for you.” 

“For me?” Just for a moment he fell into the 







310 


THE HOARDING 


trap; his eyes glowed with sudden emotion and there 
was a flush on his cheeks. (“I quite hated killing 
his one poor little hope.”) 

“I mean, of course, Mr. Beech, for you collectively. 
For your firm—perhaps really”—this very slowly, 
almost idly—“for your partner—if one must sepa¬ 
rate you into component parts.” 

There was fire in his eyes again now. “That’s 
absurd. She never had the slightest use for Box- 
rider.” 

“Are you quite sure?” said the gentle Netta. 

“Sure? Of course I’m sure, Mrs. Graeme.” It 
seemed to occur to neither of them by this that con¬ 
sidering the casualness of the acquaintance the char¬ 
acter of the conversation was becoming extraor¬ 
dinary. 

“I’m perfectly sure. If I thought she had any 
such feeling I’d consider it my duty-” 

“Need we talk of duty, Mr. Beech?” 

“I stick to the word, Mrs. Graeme. My duty to 
warn her—to warn her-” 

She laughed. “Is that perfect loyalty to your 
partner, do you think ? ’ ’ 

“Loyalty? I owe no loyalty—none where none is 
given! Oh, yes! I know you think I am talking 
oddly. I don’t care! I say I’d do a great deal to 
save her, Miss Senior I mean-” 

“Oh, yes, I guessed whom you meant!” 

“To save her from being involved in—in that 
way.” 

“But suppose she wanted to be involved—even 





THE HOARDING 


311 


that her friends would like to see her involved in that 
way-” 

“I deny the possibility of either.” 

“Are you, Mr. Beech, do you think, keeping 
strictly in mind her interests, by the way?” 

“Certainly I am. Of course I am-” 

Netta considered for a moment before continuing; 
then turning about and resting those small white 
hands on the table so that they glowed pale against 
the mahogany, she seemed to take a stance. Setting 
her eyes full upon him, she drew in a breath as if 
preparing herself for a struggle, and then: “I 
wonder if we could be quite frank, Mr. Beech?” 

“Well?” He said the word sharply, as if chal¬ 
lenging her. It seemed as if he prepared to hold 
her off. 

“Then, if we are to be frank—is your interest in 
my friend Lesley so impersonal?” 

“You are trying to suggest-” 

“That the knight would like the lady for him¬ 
self.” 

‘ ‘ I don’t—that is- But rather than see her-’ ’ 

“Wait. What you mean is this. If she won’t have 
you, she shall not have Mr. Boxrider. Rather than 
Boxrider, anybody.” 

He looked at her suddenly. Perhaps he had once 
heard a rumour; perhaps his dilated consciousness 
enabled him to read what, ordinarily, none could see. 
Certainly it was his turn. 

“Anybody?” he repeated. “Yes, I’d give her to 
anybody—Coleton. ’ ’ 







312 


THE HOARDING 


He had the satisfaction of seeing her wince. Bnt 
Netta at once recovered any calm she may have lost. 

“You want Coleton to have her!” 

He shrugged his shoulders. 

“Coleton wants her, and if—if-” 

“You can’t, he may as well. Well, but—but-” 

“You will fight me,” he burst in. She flamed, 
but she held her head up. The worst of disputing 
with madmen was that you could not use the dis¬ 
guises convention dictated. 

“Yes,” he cried again, “you’ll fight!” 

“Fight! I will see that that doesn’t happen. I 
will see that!” She was roused. 

“Yes, Mrs. Graeme, I think you will—if you can 
do anything.” 

“I wonder if you want to serve her. And, if so, 
I wonder”—she had forced herself under control 
again, she had found the old slow utterance—“I 
wonder why you prefer Mr. Coleton!” 

She was gentle, reflective—even seemed to invite 
slow, unstudied confidences. And her voice had a 
note of seeking him out; its tenderness drew him in 
spite of himself. Confide ! Almost at once his chang¬ 
ing mind seemed to find a new mood. 

“Mrs. Graeme,” he said, “you see in me one who 
hates—yes, hates —his own profession.” A grimace. 
“To see her surrendered to—to that man! Coleton, 
at least, is free from that thing—is the enemy of 
it: the thing to which I am bound—this—this pub¬ 
licity-” 

“Are you so sure!” She came closer, looking 






THE HOARDING 


313 


keenly into his eyes, and certainly—she was certain 
of it—he winced. But he thrust up his head all the 
same. 

“Sure? That he is the enemy of that horrible 
vulgarity, that misuse of beauty and art. . . . Isn’t 
his life a testimony?” 

Netta paused, as if considering. It was, though, 
a dramatized consideration. 

“Mr. Beech,” she began at last, gently, “I wonder 
if you ever heard a story about a certain agent—an 
advertisement agent, I think he called himself, or 
was it a publicity merchant?—the senior partner.” 

“Publicity merchant,” he stood back quickly, re¬ 
peating his words irresolutely, “publicity merchant 
—senior partner. What do you mean?” 

“I wonder if you can guess what I mean?” She 
peered at him, her back inclined so as to allow of her 
craning her head forward. He seemed to feel him¬ 
self exposed, studied; and his tongue stammered out 
at last: 

“You needn’t go on, I think . . . I—in fact-” 

“But you asked me.” She was not prepared to 
relax now. “Yes, a publicity merchant. This gen¬ 
tleman found advertising of the ordinary sort vul¬ 
gar. But literary advertisement, by means of 
paragraphs for the setting forth of the fine qualities, 
of a not-necessarily-to-be-mentioned great man, not 
vulgar. Remunerative, but not vulgar.. .. Though, ’ ’ 
with a smile of content, “I’m not sure that remunera¬ 
tion was the consideration. Nor was it, perhaps, 
simple devotion of the not-necessarily-to-be-men- 



314 


THE HOARDING 


tioned great man. When you don’t want to challenge 
a man openly there is a subtle pleasure—I don’t say 
for brave men but for others—in secretly setting at 
defiance the person you don’t care to challenge 
direct.” 

‘ 6 Dare! ’ ’ That was the word he had caught hold 
of; and he stood there, his lips twitching, and his 
mind plainly seeking for a reply that should save 
him from envelopment. 

“ Yes—dare. You can challenge by writing letters 
to the paper. You can challenge by doing work 
which the other person doesn’t—shall we say?—ap¬ 
prove of.” She paused. “I think, Mr. Beech, I 
really think, that you don’t need any further ex¬ 
planations.” 

He looked at her with the same irresolution. 
(“ Rather like a muddled Spanish bull with the dart 
in him,” she said afterwards. “He wanted to charge, 
to make an end of me; but he was too distracted to 
know how and where to throw himself.”) 

“You know a lot—or think you do. I don’t know 
Row you-” 

“How I know! Do you mean you deny? As a 
matter of fact, journalists hear all sorts of funny 
little stories, and if they are your friends they will 
sometimes tell you. People who labour in secret to 
help the fame of their—do you say, by the way, 
‘friends’ or ‘clients?’—mustn’t mind if some day 
they become famous themselves. As for the letter, 
I read the correspondence: and, after all, the style 
is the man. It occurred to me that this particular 




THE HOARDING 


315 


man might rush in and, well, the letter rather an¬ 
nounced itself. Disgusted . . . you were disgusted. 
And now, having explained at such length, I will 
merely ask if I have invented/ ’ 

Beech’s answer was characteristic. He turned 
suddenly and walked to the door. On the threshold 
he muttered a “Good day,” and before Netta could 
intervene further he was away into the hall and 
opening the outer door. 

“Mr. Beech,” for there were other things she had 
it in her to say. But the only answer was the sharp 
closing of a door and the beat of departing feet 
outside. 

Netta turned back into the room. There was a 
light in her eyes. It might have been decided by an 
observer that she was not displeased. 

IH 

There were things now to be considered. Suppose 
she told Lesley the truth. It did not follow at all 
that the effect would be what she wanted. . . . What 
she wanted! She began to know how much she did 
want that. Because if Lesley did turn away from 
him. . . . Only, did women turn away from men who 
failed them? For failure in the vigour of a love 
gesture perhaps. But for anything else? For a 
mere failure in moral value? 

Desperately as she wanted to believe that, she 
found herself incapable. Lesley was like any other 
woman. Netta considered herself: did she see her- 


316 


THE HOARDING 


self affected as she wished Lesley to be affected? 
Was she, as a matter of fact, in the smallest degree 
“put off ” Coleton because she knew and had known 
for long that his “ campaign/ ’ as he called it, was 
an imposture? 

And would any woman love the man the less for 
a thing of that sort, or find such a fault anything 
but an irrelevance ? 

She could not believe it. 

And yet if she told Lesley, and Lesley was affected 
in that way and turned away from Claude Coleton, 
she could then begin to flatter her hopes. She could 
not see Claude spending himself where he perceived 
that the offering was not wanted. She would have 
liked—any woman would—to have recaptured him 
from her friend. That, certainly, she would not in 
the circumstances be able to do. Of that perfect and 
exquisite experience there was no hope while Claude 
was in his present mood. But if only Lesley would 
dismiss him, Netta thought she could trust his ego¬ 
tism to take his dismissal at once and look elsewhere 
for his woman—and find her where she was. She 
was ready at last to acknowledge that she wanted 
him now on any terms—rejected or not of another. 

But she must study how to introduce the matter. 
There was, to encourage her, the idea she had had 
of Lesley in relation to—others. That glib young 
man. But when she mentioned Claude’s name it was 
only to bring back quick smiles into Lesley’s face. 

“Did Claude say what day he would be back?” 


THE HOARDING 


317 


“Oh! he thinks on Thursday. They wanted him 
to stay over the week-end. That is the worst of 
popularity, I suppose,’’ with a further smile. 

“Yes, 1 suppose so. . . . By the way, that Mr. 
Beech came to-day.” Very calmly—too calmly for 
Netta, seeing that with Beech was involved another. 
Lesley looked up. 

“Whatever did he want —not to see me?” 

“Yes, poor thing! His dreadful partner”—she 
paused, but there was no protest from Lesley to-day 
at the characterization—“his dreadful partner was, 
he wanted you to know, entirely responsible for 
dragging you into their enterprises.” 

“I thought,” said Lesley a little wearily, “that 
was all settled and done with.” 

“Possibly. I don’t know. He seemed excited, 
poor man! He doesn’t like his profession, I’m 
afraid; and yet it is a very necessary profession. 
Everybody advertises nowadays. ...” She began 
to go very carefully now and kept watching eyes on 
the girl as she spoke. “Everybody—even those who 
profess not to. . . . Why, wouldn’t it be funny if 
some day you found that even Claude-” 

Lesley flushed up suddenly. “That is a very un¬ 
necessary and really rather stupid thing to say, 
Netta. I wouldn’t mind your saying it if Claude 
hadn’t taken the stand he has. I know lots of people 
have to do it. And, in a way, it is perfectly legitimate. 
But when you suggest Claude does it, you’re making 
him—well, a blazing insincerity! So it is a stupid 



318 


THE HOARDING 


thing to say. If I did not know you so well I’d even 
say that it wasn’t the kind of thing that any¬ 
body-” 

“Who was anybody, would say!” put in Netta 
softly. “No! Perhaps not. I wonder!” She smiled 
softly to herself and then moved hummingly across 
the room. 

“You mean something.” The charge—it was al¬ 
most that—came from Lesley. 

But Netta continued on her way, came to the door, 
and only then, smiling mysteriously, looked back. 

“Mean something. I am still left wondering, my 
dear, what I mean. I am not a precisian,” and so 
she went out. 

And so an idea had been planted. Or had it! She 
was not at all confident really. She must try again: 
wait for a really happy opening and try again. 

But when one waits to execute a design it happens 
sometimes that in some other quarter forces are pre¬ 
paring to execute just such a design. 



CHAPTER XXII 


I 

The mind of Beech, when he had gone out of the 
flat at Chelsea in escape from Netta’s eye and ques¬ 
tion, was in a mere confusion. But once outside in 
the street he was consciously the helpless victim of 
ideas which now threatened to bear him away out 
of the quiet stream of reason and reality. He felt 
extraordinarily abased by a double consciousness of 
failure—failure in his encounter with Mrs. Graeme, 
but failure, too, in his general handling of his own 
life. He was appalled by his own spiritual incom¬ 
petence ; he found himself completely ineffective; he 
tasted the ultimate in humiliation. For a whole night 
and a day and another night he tasted it. The gloom 
by which he began to be enclosed seemed to him to 
have some new quality—some kind of impenetrable¬ 
ness. Before, when these clouds had come about 
him, he had sometimes seen some kind of a way out. 
He could see none now. It was a bank of night, a 
prison-house of darkness whose walls were almost 
literally objective. He had an idea that if he were 
to feel with physical hands he could touch something 
there—something that condemned him for ever to 
this eternal gloom. 

Only now and again came there a flash of red light 

319 



320 


THE HOARDING 


to give a false illumination in the blackness. It 
sprang out—that sudden flame—as his mind, turning 
upon a quest for an explanation, found it as often 
it had found it before. . . . These things were the 
work of one mind and hand—the same mind and 
hand which always had worked his humiliation. He 
improvised for himself an unreal detachment, and 
then imagined himself observing, judging, and 
presently condemning his partner with an assurance 
that he was being not less than just. 

But this illusion of maintaining a detachment 
vanished almost at once. The objectivity with which 
he professed to consider his partner was turned into 
something entirely subjective—an almost normal 
enmity. No longer did he profess justice. He did 
not care whether he hated fairly; he knew only this: 
that he hated. He was trapped; there was no outlet 
of escape, and the enemy who had trapped him, him, 
he told himself, he knew. 

For an hour he walked the streets with eyes that 
saw only darknesses, depths of pits. He had very 
little realization where he was when, looking up, he 
found himself in the Strand and approaching his 
own office. It was then that, lifting his eyes, he 
became aware of the very hoarding whose part is 
not inconsiderable in the lives of certain others than 
himself. 

“Lesley.” He said the words with the hot pas¬ 
sion of the denied. He could see her work hanging 
there, and that other thing—the greater outrage 
against decency and art. Boxrider’s achievement— 



THE HOARDING 


321 


all of it. He thought of that name “Lesley,’’ and 
by a supreme effort of self-torturing egotism he 
thrust his partner’s name against hers. Then with 
a rebound of satisfaction he took that name away 
and put forward “Coleton.” And at that conjunc¬ 
tion—‘ 4 Lesley” and “Coleton”—Boxrider must suf¬ 
fer as he was doing. No, but Boxrider could not 
have the capacity for suffering that he had. Could 
not. 

Boxrider, too, threw things off. Smug. That was 
the fellow. If he was defeated. . . . But suppose 
... a cold terror came upon him—the terror which 
had visited him before. That invincibility of Box- 
rider’s. Suppose—but he would not frame the 
thought. Only a great wave of new hate seemed to 
rise within him as he remembered that man’s habit 
of victory. . . . 

With the febrile agility of men in his condition 
his mind went on assembling charges against that 
assured young man, multiplying proofs, screaming 
judgments. He had always hated him—yes. But 
that early hatred had been lyric love compared with 
what was in his heart against the man now. Box¬ 
rider had always humiliated him. From the begin¬ 
ning he had made him ridiculous; lowered his 
prestige, even with the staff. In all his conduct of 
business he had ignored him; or when he had to take 
account of him, as when the Kingfords ’ business had 
been introduced, he had taken it on his own shoulders. 
And then there were those protests of his against 
his junior’s general policy. They had no effect be- 


322 


THE HOARDING 


cause he had no authority—no moral suasion—with 
his partner. So that here was another humiliation 
in the ever-present thought of his complete failure 
in moral authority, his own irredeemable feebleness. 

But there was a more subtle humiliation in Box- 
rider’s treatment of him. It could have been called 
an artistically perfect humiliation were it not that 
that art involves the idea of deliberation at some 
stage or other; and there was no deliberation here. 
He could have wished there had been, for that would 
have discounted the effect. A man who ignores you 
in order to humiliate you is paying you a compli¬ 
ment. You have enough of—what shall it be called? 
—consequence for him to wish to reduce your sense 
of your consequence. 

But Boxrider merely humiliated without seeming 
to know it. Which brings one to another leading 
fact in the indictment: Boxrider had not only 
humiliated him, he had by means of the humiliation 
wrought in his senior a hatred so intense as to have 
overwhelmed in him certain spiritual and artistic 
restraints. (How else had he found himself unable 
to rebut Netta Graeme?) 

So that, in effect, Boxrider had not even allowed 
him the use of his moral consciousness. 

And finally, Boxrider had stood in his way in that 
hour of his first meeting with Lesley, when there had 
been a chance for himself. She might have been 
his; she might have married him. For the one and 
only time in his life he had felt powerful. He could 
have persuaded her to open the gates of her heart. 


THE HOARDING 


323 


r And when, as it had appeared, the siege was laid, 
from another quarter had come that other force—a 
force which had not asked her to open, but if it had 
not conquered her, had at least so contrived things 
as to have ended his chances. It was once again and 
finally that sheer masculine strength, that bold un¬ 
wavering assurance, that almost terrible determina¬ 
tion which had given Boxrider so many previous 
victories. 

Beech still seemed to be standing there before the 
hoarding—that high, glowing, significant, blatant, 
challenging thing, the symbol of all he hated. Now 
finding himself here, he burst away with his heart 
hammering so that he wondered people did not stop 
to listen in affright. He knew, by some obscure 
process of consciousness—the means by which we 
are able to envisage our appearance without aid of 
mirror—that he looked, somehow, odd. He knew 
it too from glimpses of himself in the glass of other 
men’s eyes. Mad? A mere term, a sorry conclusion 
of comparative psychology! 

All the same, he was not normal. The veins in 
his temples were so swollen now that he almost ex¬ 
pected to find his cheeks running with blood from 
those burst veins. Mad—yes; violently he came back 
to the word, and this time he owned the charge. 

“Beaten by that partner of his,” this was the 
instinctively self-abasing conclusion he came to; but 
in the moment of lowest self-abasement came a 
miracle. Yes, in terms of anything but the divine— 
a miracle. 


324 


THE HOARDING 


Those new ideas springing up like flames. That 
quick-glancing Beauty. 


II 

His mind had always been extraordinarily sus¬ 
ceptible to moods; and just as the pendulum swings 
furthest right when it has just swung furthest left, 
so now his mind passed from the depths into equally 
intoxicating heights, and then back into the deeps. 

Hatred of Boxrider had ultimately blotted out 
even an idea of a cause for the hatred. It became 
a settled assumption. Hate. Hurrying from that 
vision of the hoarding he must have walked the 
streets swiftly, racing the hours that themselves 
flew. But presently he began to be oppressed by a 
conviction that he came near to a climax—something 
by which he would be involved, something the out¬ 
lines of which nevertheless he could not see. It may 
have struck him, himself, as odd if for a moment 
he had enough detachment (and in our worst mo¬ 
ments we have such detachments) that anything 
should seem certainly so near and yet so entirely hid¬ 
den. It was like driving through mist in a high land 
from which broke precipices. 

An idea that presently certainly began to occupy 
him again was that of Boxrider’s invincibility. Box- 
rider had always won. . . . But he was not going to 
win in this matter of Lesley. (How his poor con¬ 
fused mind consoled itself.) Lesley would marry 
Coleton. And yet Coleton was not the man she de- 


THE HOARDING 


325 


sired. How did he know? Had not he always known? 
No, not because Mrs. Graeme had told him. He had 
known from the beginning, instinctively. 

Those two were drawn to one another. She had 
always been interested. . . . 

And if she knew about Coleton . . . that would 
open her eyes now instead of afterwards. Her eyes 
would be open some day. No woman could have 
happiness with Coleton. He knew Coleton . . . 
knew him. Knew perhaps more than Netta did. 

And that girl was to go to Coleton. . . . Boxrider 
was to be beaten. He exulted again. Love. He had 
been starved always. Let that other man starve. 
. . . And let her —she who had denied him. 

And it was now at last that there came that doubt. 
To his confused intelligence it was less a doubt than 
a challenge. Words of Netta Graeme’s had come 
back: “I wonder if you want to serve her?” 

In a flash he knew that he did. He could not think 
why he had not protested against her doubt then. 
But he had not protested because he remembered he 
had himself under sufficient control to see that she 
was planning a trap—some kind of a trap. 

But in the frantic state he had got himself into 
now he told himself that he could protest loudly. 
Did he want to serve her? Did he? Serve her? It 
was his only thought. 

A mind on the borderland of sanity is extraor¬ 
dinarily swept by alternations of emotion. Mastered 
by one prevailing thought one moment, it may be 
swept by another a moment later. 


326 


THE HOARDING 


He had a habit of dramatizing his own future— 
particularly his remoter future. Often, for an ex¬ 
ample, he would see himself in possession of retire¬ 
ment, leisure, a small house in the country; and then 
he’d project a picture of himself as host, welcoming 
persons he had knowm in this present sordid life; 
while he read in their minds appreciation of the fact 
that only now was he enclosed by his appropriate 
environment, that only now did he breathe his proper 
atmosphere. (“We always felt he was a—gentle¬ 
man.”) Appreciation, yes, and admiration—even 
envy. 

But now his highly dilated mind, with its vision 
of Lesley Senior, began to invent extravagances. 
. . . Presently extravagances of devotion a raw 
habit, something boy-like. But remember that here 
was really a first passion, and that in a mind never, 
in the ordinary sense, mature—a mind of some fine¬ 
ness certainly, but with much undevelopment. This 
poor knight was even ready to die for the lady. 

Death is always the easiest way out for a confused 
romanticist! It is curious how the psychology of a 
man who has lived an unknowing life so far as 
women are concerned for thirty-five years may, when 
passion comes, approximate to that of youth. . . . 

He began to be taken with strange ambitions to do 
things for her and die. Why had he been born into 
a century where there were none of those false 
knights whom Galahad slew? (He had read Tenny¬ 
son. He would like to talk to women about Tennyson 
in the evening light.) 





THE HOARDING 


327 


He would like to see her falling, and catch her; 
drowning, and rescue her; on some high storey of a 
burning house, and carry her to the ground. 

He could do none of these things. 

[What was he doing, as a matter of fact? He could 
put that question to himself at certain mental in¬ 
tervals. And when the question next came he found 
it answered. What was he doing? He was letting 
her go to Coleton—willing her person, her beauty, 
her spirit, the whole of her bright reality to pass 
into the possession of that man. Ingenuous as was 
his mind in some matters, he perfectly realized Cole- 
ton. And he had heard things too. Some day she 
would realize Coleton. Some day she would not need 
to hear things. She would know. Yet he was willing 
her to go to Coleton though Coleton was not even 
her man. Her man was. . . . 

But he could not admit that. He stopped. Only, 
try as he would, he could not set against Boxrider 
what he was forced to set against Coleton. She must 
have a life of bitter misery at last with Coleton: a 
life of—yes, with a compulsion of dislike he owned 
it—a life of normal happiness with the other man. 
And he was willing her to Coleton! Thus at least 
he characterized his attitude. 

He tried to execute a mental gesture appropriate 
to a physical shrug of shoulders; and in any case, he 
reminded himself, Netta Graeme threatened to speak. 

So that the girl would be warned. Only—suppose 
Netta Graeme, for some mysterious purpose of her 
own (and she was sufficiently mysterious, he had 


328 


THE HOARDING 


found), or because at last she feared the effect which 
her intervention would have upon Coleton’s attitude 
towards herself, did not speak. That girl would 
never know—in time. Yes, that child. . . . 

(He had slipped into that odd protectiveness quite 
suddenly.) 

He could have saved her. . . . Could he, though? 
He fought that. She would never believe him. He 
thrust aside these thoughts. 

But he still walked on with an unnatural energy, 
still troubled himself immensely with that respon¬ 
sibility of which, with such abruptness, he had be¬ 
come conscious. And only at last did he, turning 
his eye about, discover that he knew the street in 
which he walked. By a not inexplicable impulse he 
had been making his way into Chelsea. . . . This 
street he knew. And over there was a building, a 
familiar outline of stone with a doorway through 
which he had never gone without a moral excite¬ 
ment. 

Who shall explain how, in a disturbed mind, the 
true mood of sacrifice may suddenly impose itself 
upon unreality; how a sick mentality may receive 
again a quickening of life and health? 

Ill 

Haggard, yellow, with flaming bloodshot eyes and 
twitching lips, he stood there trying to master his 
utterance. The girl who had opened to his knock 
felt those over-bright eyes—reflecting a mind aflame 


THE HOARDING 


329 


—full upon her; and already she was alarmed, 
alarmed for him, alarmed for some vaguely con- 
ceived-of world outside, as we are when suddenly 
brought into contact with one who carries in him 
some sign of having flung himself or been flung from 
the intellectual comity of his kind. 

“Did you want”—she paused—but found herself 
yielding him admission. And he bore in upon her, 
taking up space in the white-and-gold hall with a 
thrust back of an excited hand, opposing, as it 
seemed, something obscure and sombre to this pale¬ 
ness and glitter, and then closing the door. She 
scarcely realized that she led him into the sitting- 
room. Yet there he seemed to be standing at last. 
And all the time he was plainly fighting to master 
some immense excitement. 

“There’s something” — he stopped — “there’s 
something I want—no, I don’t want. Yes, I do. I 
want to say. I want because—it’s because you are 
involved. Not for him. No.” 

“I don’t understand you, I’m afraid, Mr. Beech.” 
She was not frightened now, but she was genuinely 
distressed by his condition. He talked like a child 
—with as little subtlety, as little steadiness. 

“Understand? No, I’m sure you don’t. How 
could you? You don’t know what I’ve been—I mean 
you can’t read my thoughts till I’ve told ’em. But 
I’ve got something that ought to be said. . . . 
You’re going to be married, aren’t you?” 

Lesley examined his face calmly. “It has been 
known for some time, I think, that I am en-” 



330 


THE HOARDING 


“Engaged to that—to Mr. Coleton. Yes. That’s 
what I mean. Well, you can’t he-” 

“I really must say, Mr. Beech, if that is what-” 

i1 Oh, I know all that! ” he cried impatiently. ‘ 4 But 
—I—I tell you, you can’t marry that—that im¬ 
postor.” 

“Impostor? What do you mean? I really must 
refuse to hear anything more. I know you are not 
very well, Mr. Beech, hut even so-” 

“I stick to my word!” cried Beech. “You can’t 
stop me till I’ve told you. You’ve got to hear—you 
must hear! Do you think I come to tell you for fun ? 
Think what it might mean to me! Not that that will 
have any meaning for you. . . . How should it?” 
He said the last words with an odd detachment as if 
he stood there reflecting. . . . “But I’ve got to 
speak. I can’t go on. She’s told me too much. I 
wanted to fight her. But she’s made me see. And 
I want to see you happy. Oh, yes, I’m going! I’ve 
no control. I don’t know all I’m saying, hut I wanted 
you to know some things. The first is about—about 
Coleton paying to get himself written up.” 

“I don’t know what that means,” burst in the girl 
suddenly, furiously, “but it’s plainly a lie.” 

“A lie? It is nothing of the kind. He does it 
always. He’s paid hundreds.” 

“You can’t prove it.” 

“Prove it? Oh, yes, Miss Senior, I can prove it. 
Because, you see, of late he has paid me.” 

“You?” 

“Yes, I, Miss Senior. I.” 





THE HOARDING 


331 


“And—and Mr. Boxrider, I suppose?” 

“Oh, Boxrider! No, he wouldn’t do it. I mean”— 
(for even in this moment of not unheroic sacrifice 
he jibbed against an acknowledgment of his part¬ 
ner’s authority)—“I mean he thought we weren’t 
the people for the business, and”—by an enormous 
effort he got out the further words—“and, in fact 
he refused to touch it . . . I—I knew that he didn’t 
care about it being done. That was one reason 
why-” 

“But I thought,” she burst in at this point, though 
with little intent to save him from confession, “that 
Mr. Boxrider was what you called on the side of this 
—this publicity in everything?” 

“So he is. But”—for a moment he hesitated 
again, then continued in apparent bitter self-despite 
—“but according to his lights he’s what I suppose 
you’d call honest. He’s never done this kind of 
thing. It’s legitimate, he’d tell you, for any man 
to advertise himself so long as he doesn’t pretend 
he doesn’t do it.” (Can’t you see the man grinding 
out those tributes?) “But—but he said we’d no 
means of sorting out the—humbugs! That was his 
idea—his scruple.” 

“But I thought you had scruples, Mr. Beech.” 

“Scruples? Oh, yes!” with a laugh. “I had 
scruples. But when a man comes to you with the 
work. . . . Besides, he—I mean Coleton—wanted 
me because he knew I’d scruples. He worked on me. 
‘You can’t do these things because you dare not face 
Boxrider.’ And I wasn’t to be threatened with Box- 




332 


THE HOARDING 


rider. And I wanted to strike out a line of my own. 
And this seemed an escape from—from cocoa.’’ 

“Well?” 

“Well, I took on the work. I was Coleton’s man. 
I advertised him. I advertised him secretly as the 
man who hated advertisements—who’d kill me if I 
advertised him. He never came into it. He was just 
the manipulator in the background. I got up stunts. 
I got up that campaign against Boxrider’s use of 
the Courtenay. I even wrote one of the letters my¬ 
self—was glad to do that too. Well, there was, you 
see, sincerity in what I did. I did hate those things. 
There never was any sincerity in what he did.” 

“It’s all untrue,” she said determinedly. 

“Is it?” He peered at her. “Ask Coleton. Yes, 
get Mrs. Graeme into the room and ask him then.” 

“Mrs. Graeme,” she spoke with a swift, cold, 
feminine curiosity: “what has Mrs. Graeme-” 

“To do with it? Ask her! Ask her if she knows 
about me and Coleton. Yes, ask her, particularly, 
if she can tell you anything about the articles on 
your man where it’s said he will never allow himself 
to be written up. That was an inspiration of his 
own. Let’s”—with the first trace of irony to be 
discoverable in his voice—“Let’s give the artist his 
due. And he paid well for that.” 

“How do you know that?” 

“Because the money w r as paid to me.” 

“And you who hated these things-” 

“Yes, I took the money. But I thought it was 
nearer literature—yes, literature—what it sounds 






THE HOARDING 


333 


like when pnt like that! But I wasn’t only thinking 
of the literary side, though you don’t know how I 
wanted to find some little element of dignity in my 
job. No, you’ll never understand what I’m trying 
to say. But I am trying to say everything. And if 
I say everything, I’ve got to say this—to admit it 
if you like. I wanted to show independence of—of 
my partner. Oh, I know what you’ll say! It wasn’t 
independence since I didn’t tell him. But then you 
don’t know, and it wouldn’t interest you to know, 
certain things about my mind. And, well—after 
that I did a good deal for Coleton, for the man who 
doesn’t allow advertising. And—that’s the man 
he is.” 

“He isn’t.” 

“Well, I’ve told you. If you don’t challenge him 
now-” 

He moved to the door. “You think I’m malicious. 
I’m not. I wish the man was straight. But I know 
too much. And I didn’t want you to find out—after¬ 
wards.” 

She would have detained him with a word, but 
while yet she tried to speak he had slipped from the 
room. The next moment she heard the front door 
bang. He was gone. 

And in ten minutes there was to be—Claude: 
Claude in new and notable circumstances; Claude 
with a ring-measurement card. For that point of 
climax really seemed near. 




334 


THE HOARDING 


v 


IV 

Claude came in rather hurriedly. The fact was 
he required contact with Lesley to reinforce his 
courage. Whenever he had time for consideration 
—whenever, at least, he achieved that obscurely-won 
mood—he found himself unsettled again, hesitant, 
playing with the idea of delay. Then knowing him¬ 
self enough to have a notion of his normal attitude 
towards these important facts of his life, he would 
know that what he contemplated was a betrayal not 
only of her hopes but his own. If he married her 
he might afterwards have regrets; but if he did not 
marry her, certainly if he left her to someone else 
to marry, he certainly would have regrets. It was 
a dilemma from which, at one time, he could have 
trusted himself as a man of the world to have evaded. 
But he could see no evasion now. All he could dis¬ 
cover was the imperative need to go back and recover 
his resolve—which he could always do by a sight of 
her. 

All the same, he wished that he had been involved 
in some situation a little less obvious than the one 
in which actually he was caught. Wedding ring 
measurements—there was about such things some¬ 
thing not merely so crude, but so unspeakably 
bourgeois. It made him feel a degree ludicrous, and 
certainly he felt trapped. 

But it seemed as if no longer could these things be 
held off. 


THE HOARDING 


335 


V 

The girl waited for his coming. And she sat there 
with a sense of growing serenity. Just for a moment 
in the onrush of Beech’s attack she had been 
troubled. But the sheer stupidity of the charge was 
now proclaimed to her. Of certain minor weaknesses 
she could imagine Claude being assured. There were 
people who called him an egotist. She could quite 
happily call him that herself. He really had a right 
to take himself seriously, and even to bestow some 
admiration on the character of his own mental 
processes, his methods of projection of his art; he 
had certainly such a right having regard to the 
reality of his influence upon his generation. But 
Beech, in his insane malice, had trumped up the one 
charge from which Claude was most completely cer¬ 
tain to be innocent. She could think of no superla¬ 
tive strong enough to give emphasis to her convic¬ 
tion of his innocence in that matter; wasn’t he the 
acknowledged leader of a stand against the blatancy 
and vulgarity of modern advertising! She even 
laughed gently in her security, and had leisure to 
bestow a little pity on Beech. Quite clearly the poor 
man’s mind was affected. She was perfectly aware 
that by unfortunate chance she had been involved in 
certain of his mental disturbances. She could re¬ 
member how he had held her hand in that hot, twitch¬ 
ing grasp of his. She knew what he meant . . . and 
now in despair he must slander. ... To slander 


336 


THE HOARDING 


seemed to come natural to him. Even his partner 
had not been spared. . . . 

But she was not afraid for Claude. And now, as 
: f bringing up an unneeded reinforcement, there 
came Claude in at the doorway, smiling now and 
certainly confident with the ring card in his hand. 
He had just taken it out to give the needed note of 
special significance to his entry. 

VI 

Claude moved across the room confidently—an 
observer not necessarily won to his side had once 
spoken of his “pale pomposity.” So, to-night, he 
came. Certainly an extraordinarily handsome man. 
The girl must have thought so often before. And it 
is scarcely to be supposed that he was unconscious 
of the fact. The entire room was bristling with 
consciousness of his beauty, and whispering its joy¬ 
ous discoveries in his ear. He missed nothing—not 
even the delicacy of the manicured fingers which held 
the card. He made it his business to observe him¬ 
self. He knew how he crossed a room, how he sat 
down, how he looked in profile, how in full face. He 
sometimes regretted his profile; the chin was not 
entirely distinguished. He presented his profile to 
such persons as he was not concerned to please. But 
he gave Lesley always a full face aspect. He was 
careful to do so to-day. 

As to whether anything in her face held him back 
for a moment neither was afterwards very clear. 


THE HOARDING 


337 


But if checked for that instant he indubitably re¬ 
covered at once, advancing with a sort of mag¬ 
nificence. 

4 ‘My dear, I have brought it. I mean the card”— 
he began to be explanatory suddenly as if he per¬ 
ceived that his meaning had not reached to her mind 
—“the card for the—ring.” (“Wedding ring” 
sounded so middle-class, so—definite. To be definite 
was to be so—vulgar. That little hesitation was so 
much better.) 

She was smiling. The ring? Why, of course, was 
in her mind. That was what she wanted in order to 
clear her mind of this fog—no, not of doubt—she 
didn’t doubt him—but of other people’s doubts. She 
came forward a step, moved by reaction from 
Beech’s whispers. She felt confident. She welcomed. 
Her eyes covered him, measured him. He was a 
fine-looking thing, with splendour of bearing; quite 
apart from being wrapt in a certain majesty of repu¬ 
tation ... a figure . . . she was proud of him, sure 
of him. He even took on a kind of splendour from 
the talk of Beech, as if the coat of dishonour his 
enemies had spun for him had grown into something 
glorious. . . . 

Yet there was something to be got over ... a 
mere formality, and she resolved to get it over now. 
If she delayed she would find it impossible, and she 
wanted to be able to refute Beech. 

“There’s something . . . Claude . . . before we 
come to that.” 

She nodded towards the card he had begun to 



338 


THE HOARDING 


draw from his pocket. “I know it*11 all sound to 
yon absurd. Only there’s been a man—a man here 
who said something about you. Of course it’s a lie. 
But I dare say I’m nervy to-day. . . . It’s a special 
occasion, isn’t it?” trying to smile. 

He smiled back, though there was a slight confu¬ 
sion in the manner—the confusion though, as she 
decided, of a mind supremely fine which has a diffi¬ 
culty in comprehending the mean conceits and jeal¬ 
ousies of lesser men. 

“Why, of course it’s a special occasion.” Didn’t 
he know it?—he who liked not such special occasions 
•—only the continual tendency towards such. “And 
rs for a man’s talking about me—if you mean some¬ 
body’s been slandering me—well, it’s the lot of those 
of us who—who emerge.” (Sufficiently modest char¬ 
acterization of a situation!) 

“Slander. Yes, that’s what it is, Claude. But I’ll 
tell you. . . . He said—you—you—you won’t mind 
my telling you, will you, and then it will be done 
with? He said you’d employed him—his name is 
Beech and he’s a partner with Mr. Boxrider—you’d 
paid him money to advertise you.” 

She waited in an expectation that was almost tran¬ 
quil for the dissipation of the lie, for its swift de¬ 
struction. Only after a full moment did she feel that 
first, strange doubt. For Claude laughed. 

“Is that all? Is that what he said? Well, that, 
surely, doesn’t amount to a charge of any kind, does 
it?” He began comfortably to come nearer. “That 
doesn’t amount to a charge.” 



THE HOARDING 


339 


She looked at him now in mere astonishment. He 
had not denied the thing: had not been at pains to 
do so. 

“ A charge? No. I’m told people have to do these 
things. But these people don’t—don’t denounce 
other people for doing it; and, you see, you do.” 

“So in my case it does amount to a charge?” 

“I—I thought—it did,” she was beginning, when 
he put in with a wave of a hand which, as she dis¬ 
covered only afterwards for the first time (so far as 
she was able to remember), seemed to her to be fat. 

“But what of it?” he said. “It’s done, as you 
say. We all have to do it—have to do it.” 

It seemed to her now as if the entire room about 
her was beginning to be mysteriously involved in 
some extraordinary modification of the relations be¬ 
tween herself and that man. And didn’t he see— 
didn’t he understand to what all these admissions 
tended?—that indeed everything was being swept 
into the stream of ideas of which Beech had been 
the source. 

“You don’t mean that, Claude.” She was aston¬ 
ished at the apparent remoteness of her voice as if 
she spoke across a continent now—a continent that 
would, in another moment, be a universe. 

“Mean it!” he laughed. “Of course I mean it. 
I tell you”—advancing the step which should now 
enable him to draw her to him—“I tell you it’s what 
we all do, and have to do. Why, my dear child, it’s 
done, I tell you! I’ve written about myself before 
to-day! It’s done, I tell you . 9 ’ 



340 


THE HOARDING 


“But you miss the point, Claude. I’m not dis¬ 
cussing whether it’s done. I’m talking about its 
being done by you” —some remote voice seemed to 
be mocking her—she with that duty of accuser thrust 
upon her. And why should she have to do these 
things?—“done by you after all you’ve said. You 
can’t have done it. Can’t!” She kept reiterating 
that now stupidly, dully. 

“Can’t!” he cried, the familiar little pucker per¬ 
ceptible in his fine brow. “Why not, pray?” 

“Why? Don’t you see? You’ve always been 
against all kinds of advertising. You’re known— 
why, Claude, you’re famous for your opposition.” 

He smiled easily. He was still assured, still un¬ 
warned by that note in her voice which must have 
caught the attention of another type of intelligence 
—one more detached from its possessor. 

“See? I see that, my dearest, my bride”—(he 
was sufficiently moved to allow the word to pass his 
lips)—“my bride is being absurd. I suppose, to try 
me.” He came closer now with his hands out, and 
she fell back two steps. 

“No, Claude. Please wait.” 

“Need we, though, trouble ourselves to-day with 
these paltry matters? Surely, darling, when your— 
your Claude brings you the means whereby you shall 
measure your finger for the symbol—the supreme 
symbol”—(he could not refrain for long, ever, from 
dropping into book language—the language of his 
kind, in books)—“the supreme symbol whereby you 
will show to the world that you are his-” 



THE HOARDING 


341 


“No, Claude, wait. It isn’t a petty thing. I mean 
in your case. It would be—yes—in other people’s. 
But not in yours. After your professions it can’t be 
trivial in your case.” 

Worlds were crashing about her. Petty? “It’s 
awfully serious to me. I—I have pictured you, 
imagined you—as being a certain thing, and you’re 
not that thing.” 

“What!” For the first time a real uneasiness 
showed in his manner. “What? because of what 
that idiot tells you-” 

“You mean”—for she was struggling for the 
relief his words would bring—“you mean he did 
invent it all?” 

“Invent?” 

“I mean, if I challenged him to produce proofs 
he would have had to own he’d lied.” 

Coleton hesitated; and in that hesitation more 
than in anything else she read her final answer. 

“I don’t say he couldn’t produce—some papers. 
But what I want you to realize is that even so I’ve 
done nothing. I’ve got to live. And a man can’t 
live in my profession without doing these things.” 

“But you’ve always said , Claude, that every form 
of advertising—of doing the things you now say you 
do—was—was horrible.” 

“Well, perhaps,” with a laugh, “one has to take 
a line or people will refuse to be interested in one.” 

“And you mean it was all a pose?” She said the 
words slowly; but there was judgment in the ut¬ 
terance ; and at last he recognized that there was. 



342 


THE HOARDING 


“A pose!” he cried. “No; it wasn’t a pose. Ad¬ 
vertising on hoardings is vulgar and detestable 
and-” 

“I can’t discuss it any more, Claude. You see 
things—things are changing—have changed.” 

“Changed? For a mere absurdity—a sorry little 
lie of a half-witted-” 

“But it isn’t a lie. You’ve acknowledged that 
what he said was true. Only—you see, Claude, you 
don’t look at things in the same light as I do.” 

“No,” he said, standing very straight now and 
bending upon her, by a supreme effort of his almost 
superb egotism, that minatory aspect the sight of 
which must have reminded her of the Claude who 
had reproved her for the sale of her picture. “No, 
I do not, I rejoice to say, see things in the same light 
as you. But I am ready to believe, my dear, that 
the present occasion, being a very special one in 
your life-” 

“Please, Claude . . . wait.” She was struggling 
to find words, even to achieve a situation sufficiently 
static to allow of her getting some kind of perspec¬ 
tive of these new, swift-moving ideas. But her very 
foundations seemed to be shifting. “I think,” she 
went on at last, “it would be better if you went away 
for this morning.” 

“You really mean that?” 

He put the demand shrilly at last, really taken out 
of the area of that vast self-consciousness of his. 
She may even have heard his words as a cry—a cry 





THE HOARDING 


343 


of pain; and certainly he was pale now, really dis¬ 
turbed. But she held to her request. 

“Yes, please go away. Now. I must think.” 

“But it’s absurd!” He began to plead, to put his 
hands upon her shoulders with a strange, sickening 
sense of doing sweet things for the last time—she 
meantime trying to evade him, and retreating. Could 
not she, she was asking herself, get him away? Sud¬ 
denly she remembered. Netta must be due back. 
Only two hours before—about a million years ago 
as it seemed—Netta had said she would be back at 
twelve. She had thought it slightly unnecessary for 
Netta to plan a return so soon—a characteristic 
small maliciousness. . . . But Netta could come back 
to forgiveness now; and in the meantime Claude 
stood before her, seeming to plead still. 

“It’s ridiculous. Don’t you see how insignificant 
it all is beside the things we are really thinking 
about?” 

In his alarm he was dropping the language of his 
books. But her own distress was too great for her 
to catch new accents. 

“I can’t see that it is insignificant. It would be so 
in the case of anybody else. But it can’t be in your 
case and with your professions. If one thinks of a 
man as being this and one finds he is that—you see 
it’s-” 

“Lesley! Lesley! Don’t go away out of my life!” 

Was this mere drama—the “spun” egotist fight¬ 
ing to hold his place or- 





344 


THE HOARDING 


Click! The sharp, bright note of a key being 
turned in the front door. Netta—and rescue! The 
man understood even as Lesley did. 

“One word. Here’s somebody coming, Lesley. 
Promise you’ll hear me. You’ll—you’ll suspend 
judgment! ’ ’ 

He to have to ask for a suspension of judgment! 
Even in his deep distress—and it had depth—he may 
have been made aware of a certain irony in that 
circumstance. He to be pleading for the maintenance 
of a relation with a woman! It is possible to con¬ 
ceive of some remoter sense within him, some minor 
officer of his subconsciousness, fussily seeking for 
record of a precedent. But she was speaking coldly, 
dismissingly. 

“I can’t promise to think that you haven’t ad¬ 
mitted what you have admitted. . . . Ah, Netta!” 

For there stood Netta Graeme smiling in the door¬ 
way—smiling and wearing the air of the kindly 
tolerant friend breaking in on lovers; smiling still 
a moment later, yet already aware of something new 
in the elements of the situation, and seeking with 
swift secret energy to discover and characterize the 
novelty lest it should contribute to her own interest. 
After all, she had reason to be hopeful. 

“You’re not going?” This sweetly to Claude, 
who, to the fresh excitement of her curiosity, was 
self-consciously groping for his hat for all the world 
like a rejected suitor in some funny lower middle- 
class romance where they picture such gaucheries as 
a regular thing. 


THE HOARDING 


345 


Claude Coleton laughed a laugh a study of which, 
by a shrewd mind, would have yielded some contribu¬ 
tion to the new conception of this man hitherto so 
securely based upon self-content. Coleton’s laughs 
were small, highly significant things, recognized by 
his followers as the deliberate gestures of a highly 
persistent and governing ego. But this laugh was 
merely the laugh of a discomfited and defeated man. 

“Yes, I’m going. I’d”—with an attempt to re¬ 
capture ease of manner—“I’d overstayed my time. 
So don’t be unjust and say I fly because you return.” 

With some such talk he got himself to the door, 
turned then, once, a troubled eye (as it seemed to 
the curious Netta) upon Lesley, called a “good-bye” 
with something of the checked gaiety of a bird with 
its wing broken, and was gone. 

At a distance Lesley had begun following him out. 
She meant to escape to her room before Netta, whose 
bright eye told of a curiosity and of an intent, could 
get in her questions. 

As Coleton pulled the outer door behind him, Les¬ 
ley reached the threshold of the room. 

“Claude was in a hurry, this morning! Whatever 
have you been doing to the poor dear?” 

“Doing?” Lesley had turned in the doorway to 
glance back, but she did not look into Netta’s eyes, 
whereat that shrewd woman was pleased, for now 
she had further confirmation. “Doing? Have I 
been doing anything?” 

“Why, my dear, you don’t realize it, perhaps. 
But you must have been doing wonders actually. 


346 


THE HOARDING 


It’s no little achievement for a woman to send away 
a confused Claude. A confused Claude was always 
a contradiction in terms when I knew anything of 
him. ’ ’ 

6 ‘When you knew anything of him.” Lesley re¬ 
peated the words with an immense gravity which 
may have seemed odd. There was something old and 
judicial about the manner, something obscurely de¬ 
tached. “I wonder what you knew of him. . . .” 
Shp seemed to hesitate and to go on, when she did, 
in a tone growing more and more impersonal. . . . 
‘ ‘ Did you know him to allow himself ... I mean to 
get himself—written about.” 

Netta’s eyes shone brightly. So it had come. 

‘ ‘ Know him to do that ? Why, of course, my dear 
Lesley. But what of it?” (knowing how significant 
the matter must inevitably be to that girl). “Isn’t 
it what all men do? Does one trust any man?” 
(knowing that that girl had trusted one man). “Does 
one, in any case, measure men by paltry standards 
of that kind? One likes a person or not—irrespec¬ 
tive of what he is or does” (knowing that to that 
young intelligence, that untrained judgment, there 
could be no compromise at the bidding of Love or 
anything else). 

“You think that?” (meaning “7 don’t”). 

And that was all. Lesley walked very deliberately 
now down the passage and so to her room, leaving 
Netta speculating, measuring, hoping, at last smiling 
happily. 


THE HOARDING 


347 


Boxrider had an odd experience, the office tele¬ 
phone being the instrument. Merely this, that being 
called to the receiver, a voice (a feminine voice) put 
a question—the usual question you might say—a 
mere 4 ‘Is that Mr. Boxrider?” 

“Yes,” he had said. 

And then had come this: “You want—something. 
Don’t give up.” 

“Give up?” 

“Hope, Mr. Boxrider.” 

“Who is speaking?” 

Silence. 

“Who is speaking, please?” 

Silence. 

He couldn’t “fix” that voice. He knew so few 
women. It wasn’t. . . . No, it was not hers. But 
the message had been intended for him. His name 
wasn’t a common one. . . . 

He went back to his desk and sat there long. Then 
suddenly he grew ashamed. He to sit. . . . Busi¬ 
ness ! There must be business done. Only two days 
before he had told his partner: “We’ve got to ex¬ 
pand. I’m going for more trade.” 

“More trade . . . what’s the good?” 

Boxrider had looked at him shrewdly. “Oh, 
there’s an object, if you can see it!” 

“I can’t,” shrilly (how shrill Beech had become; 
his very thoughts, gestures, movements were shrill, 
over-pitched). 

Boxrider had shrugged his shoulders. 


348 


THE HOARDING 


“If you think-” 

“Think? I won’t think! Think! Don’t I think? 
How does one stop thinking?” 

“Well, it’s merely this, Beech. Business means 
money, doesn’t it? I’ve something to sell that is 
worth money—a considerable amount of money. 
Did I tell you that I booked ‘Tom’s Tea’ yesterday 
—all their business for five years? And we begin 
with a contract with the first page of the ‘Daily 
Story’ every Wednesday for the first of those five 
years. At last I’m beginning to do big business.” 

And that was how he had felt. It was how, in 
increasing degree, he was feeling to-day. He had 
to-day a curious over-mastering sense of reaching a 
climax. He would go out now and do more business. 
He would force business. Why, he could not say, 
but that message now mingled oddly with this vast 
growing intent. And so into a street alive with sug¬ 
gestion, as it seemed to him to-day, he went with a 
vivid, eager resolve. Business! 

Business, and then- 


VII 

Boxrider knew where he intended to go, and be¬ 
fore the vast and imposing marble doorway of an 
office at the Holborn end of Kingsway he stopped. 

Inside, a porter came forward with his first-quality 
deference. He did not know Boxrider, but he recog¬ 
nized that the man, whoever he was, got that first- 
quality deference from all public servants. 




THE HOARDING 


349 


“Mr. Davey? Yes, sir. Will yon come this way?’’ 
There was no suggestion that Mr. Davey might 
refuse to see him. Boxrider was always one of the 
men who ‘ ‘ walk right in.’ 9 

Anyhow, Davey seemed to have heard of Boxrider. 
He rose, a smallish, exquisitely shaven creature in 
best black vicuna (his tailor had told him that) and 
a white slip. A “Do it now merchant” was his 
clerks’ description of him. He worked all day sur¬ 
rounded by filing cabinets and telephones, and looked 
like the ideal type of the “Treble-your-salary-by- 
correspondence” school people. 

He waved Boxrider to a seat. But the visitor 
merely nodded. “I’ll save your time,” he said. 
“Look here! The Government have signed an order 
to pull down the Minor Crown Colonies Office in 
Whitehall. There’ll be hoardings up for twelve 
months. I’ve got all the spaces. There’ll be three 
sides on view. I’ve allotted two. I’ve got one left. 
Now, if I’m correctly informed, you’re about to 
handle the ‘Budd Light Car’ over here.” 

“Who told you that?” snapped Davey. 

Boxrider shrugged his shoulders. “I’ve just been 
talking to a man back from America. And in 
America—one hears things. Well, it’s the best site 
in London for you. Every man going in and out 
of the House sees your car and nobody else’s.” 

“What do you want?” 

Boxrider threw down a scrap of paper. 

“There are my figures.” 

Davey gave them a glance and looked up. 


350 


THE HOARDING 


“Right. Send in yonr contract/’ (“The chap 
was in the doorway, though,’* he said afterwards, 
“before I’d agreed. That’s the kind of self-con¬ 
fidence he shows always, I believe; but I confess that, 
as it was my first experience, I was a little taken 
aback.”) 

In the street Boxrider paused and considered. 
'And it was now that an impulse came which made 
him first look at the watch on his wrist and then 
signal for a taxi. To the driver he said “Euston.” 
Yes, it was extraordinary how inexhaustible his 
energy was this morning. . . . That message? Per¬ 
haps. He had had this notion for some days—this 
idea of attacking the provinces. But the impulse 
“to do it now” was certainly a thing of this moment. 
“Northampton,” he said at the booking office. He 
would be back in four hours. 

Arriving in the town of leather he drove otf at 
once, and ten minutes later found himself looldng 
up at a tall office building backed by a huge, red¬ 
brick factory, across the whole face of which office 
stood out in brazen work the legend “Q for Quality 
in Boots.” We all know those boots, but perhaps 
we know them better to-day than we did. Boxrider 
marched in. 

“I want to see Sir James.” 

The man addressed looked for a moment doubt¬ 
fully at the caller. 

Sir James ? Sir James was not to be seen without 
an infinitude of negotiation. 

“Have you—have you an appointment, sir?” 


THE HOARDING 


351 


“Certainly not!” answered Boxrider. There was 
almost a suggestion that some subtle affront must 
be intended by the suggestion that he had an ap¬ 
pointment ; and the commissionaire began to find all 
his reasoning processes breaking up. This kind of 
person—well, he had never seen a person of this 
kind before; and, as he confessed to the man who 
relieved him at dinner time, “I was that flummuxed 
I let ’im up to Sir James without thinking more. 
Couldn’t think. Now if ’e’d said ’e ’adn’t an ap¬ 
pointment but ’e thought Sir James would see ’im, 
I’d ’ave doubted. But when ’e stands there, snapping 
out as if ’e was the Lord Mayor from the Manshing 
’Ouse, couldn’t condescend to ’ave appointments 
an’ little things like that—why ’e beat me.” 

Sir James determined to have something to say 
to that idiot who had opened the door and pushed in 
on him that extremely assured young man. 

Sir James Bell was elderly and distinctly of the 
old school. He could be slow and coldly amiable. 

“I don’t think I ever had the pleasure,” he mur¬ 
mured, his eye on the card which Boxrider, not the 
commissionaire, had flung down before him. ‘‘ Mr.— 
Mr. Boxrider, and my man evidently misunderstood 
—brought you ” 

“That’s all right, Sir James,” broke in Boxrider, 
with a laugh. “He did the right thing, as I’m sure 
you’ll agree when you’ve heard what I’ve got to 
say.” 

Sir James’ brows began to pucker, the corners of 
his mouth to tighten. ‘ ‘ I don’t know, Mr. ’ ’—with an 



3 52 


THE HOARDING 


affectation of consulting the card to get the name 
correctly before continuing—“Boxrider. I don’t 

know that I desire—that is, that I have the time-” 

A delicately nurtured hand caressed the shaven chin. 

4 ‘But you’ve not heard me out, Sir James. What 
I’ve to say is this. I’ve been reading your annual 
report.” 

“Well?” sharply, defensively. 

Boxrider came closer. 

“There was, I observed, a drop in profits—a bad 

drop- No, no! hear me out, Sir James. Why 

was there that drop? Not because your goods are 
deteriorating. They’re not. I wear your boots my¬ 
self and know they’re the best in Europe. But every¬ 
body doesn’t know that; and the reason everybody 
doesn’t know that is this—that you don’t tell ’em.” 

“We do!” For a moment the proud old man 
who had lived and worked in that quarter of his town 
for fifty years and claimed to know his business 
seemed concerned only to refute a calumny. But 
there was some note, as of an obscure kind of despair, 
that could hardly have been missed by his hearer. 
“We do. I say we do.” 

“No, sir. You advertise—yes. That is, you pay 
money to newspapers and billstickers to allow space 
to you in which you make certain statements. But 
they’re not statements that anybody reads. ‘Q—for 
Quality Boots.’ Yes, that’s all right. But it’s not 
new. But what is the good of saying, as I see you 
were saying last night in your advertisement in a 
London paper, ‘ Q Boots are the best on the market; 




THE HOARDING 


353 


you have only to compare them with others to be 
assured of this’? Now does a man buy half a dozen 
pairs of boots at one time and compare them 
solemnly? He buys one pair at a time; and what 
you’ve got to do is to see that the next pair he buys 
is yours.” 

As usual he had got the ear of his hearer. He 
always got that at once, however unwilling those 
people might seem at the outset. 

“Now, how are you going to do that? By making 
him read about you. Well, and how do you make a 
man read? What would make you read yourself? 
What you want is to humanize your copy. Be lively, 
though not with that rotten sprightliness that some 
people go in for—people who won’t spend the neces¬ 
sary money. And above all don’t do your advertis¬ 
ing from here. Have a London agent. Have,” with 
a quick smile, “have me. Give me a trial. Only a 
London agent knows the psychology of a London 
crowd, and it’s the London crowd that you want to 
get at. You in Northampton understand boots better 
than anybody else; but we in London understand 
publicity better than anybody else. You’ve got to 
be lively with the liveliness the Londoner likes. 
There are various ways of being lively—the taste 
changes. Just now the method is to connect your 
goods with a character. If you find a good character, 
a really popular figure, and connect him to your boot 
you’ll do business.” 

“You’d better tell me-” 

Well, there was the conquest. But you have to 



354 


THE HOARDING 


realize what that man, James Bell, was to appreciate 
the quality of the victory. Bell, the Conservative; 
the man of Corporation feasts, dignities, slow sanc¬ 
tions; suspicious of the new and obscure; Bell who 
had sent away young men for showing an impulse 
to be what he called “vulgar”; who had declared 
that “We old houses have a reputation to maintain, 
not only for quality in the things we sell but for 
decency in the way we sell them”; Bell who had kept 
the entire business in his own hands, board of di¬ 
rectors though there might be to adjust the policies 
of the concern; Bell —that Bell known to all his 
friends as invincible—had surrendered. 

We are all familiar to-day with the alphabet infant 
who is always reminding us that Q is Quality in 
boots. 

That effort of Boxrider’s may now be envisaged 
as in the nature of the climax—not actually the big¬ 
gest thing, but the particular success which coincided 
with a parallel climax in this life of his. 

For Bell it was a change of policy and a pretty 
effective change, as he was ready to admit when, at 
the next annual meeting, he announced that profits 
were up for the first time for ten years. 

“We have—er—introduced new methods—drastic 
reforms in our publicity, with what, I think you will 
agree, gentlemen, are gratifying results-” 

Boxrider ever afterwards thought pleasant things 
about Bell for reasons that Bell would never have 
been in a position to understand. . . . Bell, yes; but 
always, first and above all—Kingfords. 





THE HOARDING 


355 


Leaving Bell, he went back through the busy nar¬ 
row town to his station and to London. It was ten 
minutes past four as he walked out into Euston 
Square. A summer haze hung over Euston Road, 
and in the golden mist he walked on through 
the Bloomsbury Squares and came at last to Hol- 
born. He was nearing his office. And as it had been 
doing all day his mind was going back to that tele¬ 
phone message. 

He had a notion, he discovered, to eye his work 
upon the Strand hoarding; and so, deliberately, he 
began to approach. 


VIII 

Alone in her room Lesley walked restless. There 
was something misappropriate in taking possession 
of a bedroom at mid-day for purposes of self-ex¬ 
amination; and she was uneasy at once. The sun¬ 
light pouring into the room seemed utterly to refuse 
its sympathy, and she wanted desperately the sym¬ 
pathy of natural things. 

Moving about now, what most distressed her was 
a sense of the collapse of something. This business 
of Claude Coleton never became a matter of excul¬ 
pating him. She did not find herself seeking excuses 
for him. Her love for him had collapsed—that was 
precisely the word. It had stood and—it did not 
stand. 

And already she was being troubled, haunted by 
memories. She looked back to that brief time be- 


356 


THE HOARDING 


tween her first meeting with him and the hour when 
she first became filled with that immense thought 
of his interest in her, when he had first compelled 
her to the happy excitement of the desired. She had 
had then, in that brief interval, a momentary leisure, 
a fleeting detachment, and had judged him to be— 
what? She could remember an impression of some¬ 
thing—a softness, a kind of amorphousness, and cer¬ 
tainly a rather expensive egotism—qualities which 
did not go to the making of a character of the kind 
which could be relied on to maintain ideal standards. 

Considering that picture, she demanded of herself 
why she need have been affected by it. Conversely 
to the condition of a mourner who finds himself dry¬ 
eyed at the death of a relative and is distressed 
because he is not distressed, so this girl, standing 
close to the fact of a relationship with this man, was 
distressed because she was distressed. She wanted 
to have been able to laugh quietly, easily, happily; 
and the laugh when it came was hysterical. 

She wanted to have killed these doubts with her 
love, and she had found her love killed by these 
doubts. Doubts? Not doubts, convictions. He had 
made, at first, a quiet cheerful admission. Could not 
he see that he had disturbed not merely a minor 
conception of him but a major? A pebble had been 
removed? Yes, but a pebble on which the entire 
structure of a universe depended. 

It may seem curious that Lesley should be so im¬ 
mensely affected by a discovery of this kind. The 
fact that she had gone in and out of the world among 


THE HOARDING 


357 


men, in and out of the schools where, in young pas¬ 
sions we may spend ourselves, exhibit ourselves, and 
learn certain rather grim principles of life, might 
suggest a preparation in her for anything—certainly 
for an easy sustaining of minor losses—minor, that 
is, in terms of the thinking of a woman of the world. 

The character of that mentality of hers, however, 
is less uncommon than may be supposed. Girls of 
her spiritual intensity, in exercise of some swift 
eclecticism pick out for notice only something here 
and there from the myriad impressions crowding in 
upon them; and the selections are the few fine things 
they see. Their conceptions of their kind precede 
their actual impressions: they indulge; they see men 
through an atmosphere of their own creation. Their 
ideas are subjective ones, rarely objective. 

Lesley had never known detachment; she had 
created an image of Claude from her inner conscious¬ 
ness of him. And now the idol was swept from its 
pedestal. 

The severity of the shock the more completely 
destroyed her image of him; and as that fell it left 
its place vacant for the rising of that first, and until 
now forgotten, impression of a man indulgent, self¬ 
delighting. Yes, her life was in ruins. She had no 
standards now; any standards she had had she must 
henceforth inevitably distrust. She would have to 
begin all over again. And of course any profession 
of principle made by a man must never be believed. 

She was extraordinarily distressed. And she could 
see no way back to Claude. She could eye him, in- 


358 


THE HOARDING 


deed, coldly through her very tears. But presently 
she began to suspect as a possibility that Claude had 
been a creation of her own; and that it was her own 
creation which she had loved rather than the actual 
Claude. It was not the light in his eyes, the move¬ 
ment of his body, the sway of him as he came to¬ 
wards her, the touch of his hands, or any of those 
things that went to make up the real man. It was 
that idealized conception, that figure to which she 
had looked up, that man significant, as it had seemed 
to her, of distinction, high purpose, and an exalted 
art of living—no less than of working—on which 
she had spent herself. 

Well, it was over. 

How would Claude like it? She found she did not 
care. She could imagine that he would be wounded 
as she would not, once, have believed possible. Still 
she could not care. 

It occurred to her that Netta would be interested 
—was interested. This would mean something to 
Netta. And then a new thought came: Claudel 
default from high virtue meant nothing to Netta; 
such things were irrelevant to Netta. If Netta loved 
a man she loved in complete despite of discoveries 
such as she (Lesley) had made. 

She found herself wondering, in her own way, 
whether Netta could be right. If that was the way. 
. . . Was she being absurd? Was the thing called 
Love of such unsubstantial stuff that at a mere touch 
it could vanish? Or was it not rather like some 
splendid living organism, a fine upstanding thing 


THE HOARDING 


359 


which yet, by the entry into it of some minute par¬ 
ticle of arsenic or a small pellet of lead, falls to the 
ground dead? 

The latter characterization seemed to her to be the 
more useful. Yet still she examined herself—only 
to return to herself the same answer. She had loved 
this man because she had first—what was the phrase ? 
—looked up to him, yielding him what had seemed 
an appropriate reverence. Love had depended upon 
veneration—or something akin to veneration. The 
one was structurally dependent upon the other. Re¬ 
move the one and the other crashed to the ground— 
where now it lay in ruins. 

Presently she found herself, in a kind of wistful¬ 
ness, reviewing certain circumstances apparently at 
first remote enough. Meetings with those other men. 
Beech. . . . She was ready to be angry with Beech. 
But her sense of justice ultimately acquitted him. 
If what he had said was true, and it was true, it was 
well that she should know. His disclosures might 
appear to her in perspective as a smaller affair than 
it now appeared, though she did not think it would 
ever seem less. But if it had been made to her after 
she had married Coleton—if she had discovered him 
then a mere cynical poseur —in what ruins would not 
her life have appeared to be involved. She must— 
through tears maybe—but still she must bless Beech! 

Her mind, running from Beech, came suddenly 
upon his partner. She found herself much more 
ready to be angry, but with an anger the aim of 
which was much less steady. The want of steadiness 


360 


THE HOARDING 


did not, however, excite her inward comment at the 
moment. Her immediate consciousness was of Box- 
rider as a suitable target. (She wanted a target. 
She had something to fire off.) And, after all, if he 
had not involved her in that transaction of the pic¬ 
ture, would Coleton have come to be signified to her 
in the same degree as he had been—as the protago¬ 
nist of a fine protest against the vulgarity of adver¬ 
tising? It was that picture, and the fact of her 
having sold it, which had contributed so much to a 
situation in which she was made to found her love 
for a man upon something almost specific. If there 
had been no picture, Claude would by now have sig¬ 
nified to her merely a man of distinction in the world 
of letters, and he would certainly be quite unsus¬ 
ceptible in her eyes to a charge such as had now 
destroyed him. 

At last she came to this: that the enemy was this 
thing called Publicity. It had involved the Beeches 
and the Boxriders on the one hand; it had dragged 
in the Coletons on the other; finally it had drawn in 
her herself. 

Yes, indubitably the enemy. Looking back she 
had an overwhelming sense of the menace of the 
thing, as of something that had lurked in the back¬ 
ground of her life, dragon-like, and that had at inter¬ 
vals struck at her, until at last it came out deliber¬ 
ately to destroy. 

Boxrider, then, is to be envisaged as the last per¬ 
son whom she wished to see—his work, profession, 
or whatever she was to call it, being so cardinal a dis- 


THE HOARDING 


361 


ability as to shat him for ever oat of her presence, 
even oat of her conscioasness. If she had banished 
Coleton, she had blotted oat Boxrider from her 
mind; all of which is rather carioas. 

Presently, to avoid Netta, she pat on her hat and, 
withoat calling at the sitting-room door, walked 
straight oat into the street. She wandered then 
throagh Battersea Park and at last back across the 
river and so to Westminster. There was a heavy, 
warm haze aboat her and before, and she saw distant 
shapes in mists and shadows. This blarring of oat¬ 
lines fitted her mood to-day. It saggested avoidances, 
refasals to be stark; and for some sach example and 
encoaragement she foand herself seeking. Still she 
walked on, and realizing at last that she was asing 
the Embankment, she tarned ap a side street with a 
thoaght that if she mast find food—as she sapposed 
she mast—the Women’s Reform Clab was near. She 
had her first moment of objective cariosity regarding 
herself as she stood for a moment and hesitated at 
the Clab portal. For, after all, there was she—she 
coaid peer at herself as at something entirely de¬ 
tached—there was she, going in at this door in order 
to be sarroanded by the very walls which had once, 
in a first moment of high significance, enclosed her 
with Claade. Here she had first been made aware 
of tendencies—towards herself. Here had Claade 
become the worshipped Claade, the beloved Claade, 
the welcomed dictator Claade. 

And to-day, with the image of Claade radely 
broken before her eyes, here, sarely, was the best 



362 


THE HOARDING 


place for her feet. Was not coming here a thrusting 
upon herself of pangs that could have been easily 
spared? Was not she offering herself pregnant 
memories? Why, even this mere threshold had its 
memory of a safe conduct to a cab, with a hand— 
the male hand—grasping tenderly. 

And yet still she persisted —could persist. It was 
this potential in herself which impressed her so pro¬ 
foundly as she considered her own present attitude. 
On the other hand, she was still convinced by the 
complete downfall of something that had once stood 
up fine and distinguished before her. Shattered 
idealism? Well, but the shattering involved a suffi¬ 
ciently tragic sequel. She felt extraordinarily the 
victim of certain reactions still—reactions, unques¬ 
tionably, to that downfall of her belief in Claude. 

And in the meantime she partook of a modest 
luncheon, and then wandered out towards the street. 
Here, turning northwards, she came a moment later 
into the Strand. 

And it was even as she came there and stood look¬ 
ing across the street that, half veiled in the summer 
haze, the great hoarding rose up before her. Familiar 
though she was with the fact that it stood where it 
did, it yet loomed up in front of her to-day with some 
extraordinary character of surprise. She certainly 
started at sight of it, as if it had had movement, 
volition, and had come suddenly upon her. But sur¬ 
prise was not a lonely sensation springing obscurely 
from her remote consciousness. There was some- 


THE HOARDING 


363 


thing else which had its roots there—something dark, 
inexplicable. . . . Fear. 

She dared not explore below that surface of self. 
And yet—Fear? Of what?—of whom? She had, 
perhaps, surprising intuitions. Out of that fsery 
mist what visions might rise—visions of strange, 
dark fates, of shadowy forms which yet moved pow¬ 
erfully, as with the power of life and death. She 
had an extraordinary and terrifying sense of being 
involved, drawn under. She stood there the victim 
of that terror . . . and yet the extraordinarily ex¬ 
cited victim. It was no cold terror, no abject terror. 
She was exalted by a sense of adventure; she found 
herself, with a thrill, called on to step into an un¬ 
known wherein she would 4 4 live dangerously. ’ ’ And 
while yet she stood waiting, her eyes upon the misted 
hoarding whereon the colours wove themselves in 
and out of one another, the vision came to her. 

IX 

She knew not, and never afterwards knew, really, 
for how long she stood there in the high shadow of 
New Lane where it debouches into the Strand. But 
all the time she stood looking across at that hoard¬ 
ing. 

Advertisement. The blatant thing, the vulgar, the 
thing to destroy which her lost lover had laboured 
with such a devotion. Now that he grew insignificant, 
need his principles grow so also? By the laws of 


364 


THE HOARDING 


what moral universe was it appointed that if the 
teacher fell through an insecurity in his moral struc¬ 
ture the lesson he had taught fell with him? 

There before her, hanging upon that planked 
frame, were those appeals to the minds of men and 
women hurrying past and troubled with many cares 
of life. They had to be abrupt appeals, and vulgar; 
and yet not necessarily and not always vulgar. Dim 
to-day in the mist shone the reproduced colours of 
that master genius. . . . There was something— 
something that challenged. An outrage. . . . That 
was what they called it—agreed, you might say, to 
call it. Very nearly her own word . . . and in a 
further corner, the thing from her own brush. . . . 

Advertisement. 

And now the vision, as if of the thing against 
which her heart flung all its forces, stood up sud¬ 
denly to defend itself. As if an accused set up its 
justification. 


X 

She was in the midst of a great traffic. She stood 
in the centre of a circle of the whole world, London 
being that centre. Trade—the exchange of the 
bazaars of India for the looms of Lancashire, the 
grain of Canada for the coal of South Wales. 

And promoting this trade, this exchange, this 
preservation of the equipoise of a universe, were 
these men she had despised, these adventurers. 
Their blatant words were the news of the movement. 



THE HOARDING 


365 


Kingford’s cocoa. She had known nothing of that 
commonplace beverage, only its advertisements; and 
particularly those curious, personal—appallingly 
personal—advertisements, over which shop-girls 
and mill-hands giggled. But now this drink went 
to her head. Though it had not passed her lips she 
saw visions—strange pictures of remote scenes. 

Wide blue skies. Green plantations. Graceful 
brown forms of women moving before her, their 
bare, brown arms raised as their fingers pluck, from 
the bushes, the berry. . . . Impersonal these? But, 
no, as now she remembered. In the heart of each 
of them was sex and strange obscure passions; the 
hidden realities of something individual and im¬ 
mortal. The curtain of the East, hanging between 
them and her, was, for a moment, lifted, and she saw 
life in terms of their conceptions. 

Then back into the deep, eternal mystery of their 
race and world—that world where the dimensions 
even are not as ours—are they received. . . . 

White-robed coolies carrying boxes to a ship’s 
side. Each heart of those men mysteriously am¬ 
bitious, passionate, resourceful to win some inex¬ 
plicable end. What these men are seen doing is the 
least part of the fact by which they are signified. 

And the ship with its blue-eyed, raddle-faced cap¬ 
tain, English (Liverpool, Bootle), and with hopes 
of home within the month now. And the crew. Dago 
some of it but British also—Cockneys with their 
readiness again for old Lime’ouse, little black-eyed 
Taffies from Cardiff, that engineer from Glasgow, 


366 


THE HOARDING 


where they make engineers on the mass-production 
principle; the Irish cook, though talking like a Dub¬ 
lin Christian and not like a hired funny man. Every 
one a palpitating reality, not a mere cameo, a living 
creature with hopes and fears, delicacies and deceits; 
visions of women and of little rooms and tiny shrines 
all encompassed in the heart of each. Captain and 
crew of the cargo steamer—whatever you choose— 
carrying home berries of cocoa. . . . But her swift 
and devoted mind did not leave them now. Who but 
she stood on the bridge beside that blue-eyed skipper 
when, being brought near some peril, he dodged and 
ran. She could see those cold stars overhead and 
that trudging vessel pushing on home. And, in the 
hold, berries for Kingfords! 

And then the men in the docks at Weftport, each 
with some kind of a reality of home behind him—a 
wife, a child—and every one different from every one 
else. It was this extraordinary and overtopping fact 
of personal individuality which made her, con¬ 
templating it, catch her breath. 

There were the engine-drivers and guards with the 
goods; yard workers swinging out these crates from 
Kingford’s wagons in their Cheshire garden city. 
And finally—or was it finally?—there was that Gar¬ 
den City, Kingford Town. 

She had had a prejudice against the Garden City 
on an artistic scruple. There had seemed to her 
something about the thing which was contemptuous 
of the spirit of Place. An ordinary town or village 
had the slow, casual beauty and reality of moss; its 


THE HOARDING 


367 


growth was undirected, it was formed of many dif¬ 
ferent contributions from many different sources, it 
was coloured by a thousand different minds, lighted 
by a million thoughts; it was no man’s—it was every 
man’s. But a garden city was a single thought; it 
was the conception of a single mind. 

And often she had shrugged a shoulder at garden 
cities. But now the light of the vision which had 
brought before her those far eastern fields and that 
had dived into the hearts of homeward voyaging 
Englishmen, fell suddenly upon the Garden City. 
She saw it as it might be perhaps—who knew, for she 
didn’t—as it was. The conception of one mind— 
yes; but a mind not ignorant of, or indifferent to, the 
reminders of duty to those whose brains and fingers 
were making wealth. And about those adventitiously 
assembled streets and houses of the industrial towns, 
was there not sometimes an essential ugliness, a 
veiled indecency, an implicit challenge to the hu¬ 
manity which professed to condemn darkness and 
dankness, inefficient drainages, subsoils that still 
sweated, the shutting out of the light of heaven, the 
crowding of many the better to give space to the 
few? Squalor, misery, death belonged perhaps even 
to the seemingly pleasant towns, those slower results 
of indefatigable, laborious, but slow Time. 

Kingford Town, where men could breathe clean 
air, see a sky untroubled by a pall of earthly vapours, 
enjoy the beauty of trees and flowers, and, above all, 
have opportunity to realize themselves: was not 
Kingford Town, achievement of the genius of a 


368 


THE HOARDING 


single mind though it was, something better than 
many of those older places? Was there not here 
amidst these little jolly stucco and pebbledash single- 
fronted houses (many different in detail but all of 
a small not highly distinguished pattern)—was there 
not here essentially a nobler perspective, a finer 
reality than that of these little damp houses of an 
older time—even those within the shadow of some 
famous old Gothic? 

She watched the life of the place, the men 
grumbling a little at their conditions (they would be 
bound to do that, being not extraordinary English¬ 
men), but going out to their work so pleasantly near 
at hand; and all those girls coming from those little 
houses, young romantics all of them, caught already 
by the enchantment of life. Making Kingfords, pack¬ 
ing it, forwarding it. . . . 

And now she burst from her Garden City and 
came to the shops outside. Women of every kind: 
the well-to-do sort in her furs on Ealing Broadway 
and Hampstead High Street. . . . “And I want a 
packet of Kingford’s cocoa”; this to that pale young 
man behind the counter with his quick assiduous 
pencil for each item. And that other sort, shawl 
over head in Angel Lane, Stratford, or in Bermond¬ 
sey, or in Weftport docks—she also asks for “King- 
fords.” 

And finally here are these people at home, encom¬ 
passed by the mystery that is behind the shut door 
—behind every shut door. She saw them at their 


369 


THE HOARDING 

Mk/k 

table, drinking that commonplace but not unwhole¬ 
some liquid, that familiar, homely thing. . . . 

She paused. She had, perhaps, with this suddenly 
born, swift, vivid, all-embracing genius of hers, seen 
a million faces, dark faces, sun-tanned faces, the love- 
lighted faces of factory girls, the pale faces of shop¬ 
men, and every face was that of some man or woman 
involved in this one traffic, this thing called King- 
fords. To her now it was no mere objective pageant: 
it had the mystery and beauty and significance of 
life itself—of the life in which she had her part. She 
found herself immensely involved with these others. 

And Kingfords was but one of many such great 
traffics—soap, cotton, candles, a million and a million 
more—made known and glorious by the men and 
women who maintained them. 

Yes, and making these traffics possible, making 
them increase, aiding their conquests, widening their 
renown was this thing called Advertising. King- 
fords, it had been said, was built up on advertising. 
So that those dark men with their mysterious pas¬ 
sions, those blue-eyed sailors, those laughing factory 
girls . . . and the others . . . were maintained in 
their places, afforded some part of the dignity that 
you associated with a world traffic by—this adver¬ 
tising. 

She still stood looking deep into that haze. For 
the moment the spell of the adventure had made her 
forget those earlier pangs of that obscure terror. 
. . . She was being involved . . . her fate was being 



370 


THE HOARDING 


woven. Mysteriously, out of those misted colours, 
as it seemed, her fate was being woven. 

She turned with a swift, passionate surmise as the 
sound of a step caught her ear. 

And then she knew. ... In a flash the mystery 
hid in these colours was being interpreted. 

Boxrider! At her side standing over her. She 
had never thought of him as a tall man, but now 
he seemed to tower, his head among the heavens, 
his eyes brilliant, and their gaze cleaving the mists 
and shining down into her. And all these colours, 
caught, as it were, even from the palette of that 
hoarding, had become pigments, making more radiant 
the universe through which his voice echoed as he 
called her. . . . 

“Lesley!” 








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